Comparing the computing performance of the PIC microntroller series. #whetstone #dhrystone #pic10 #pic12 #pic16 #pic18 #pic24 #pic32

https://www.i4cy.com/pic_benchmark/

[13/03/2023]

4.4BSD UNIX™, the last version to be written at Berkeley UC. Shown here with vintage keyboard and vintage monitor, and 3 microcontrollers to glue it all together.

#100DaysOfCode #BSD #UNIX #Microcontroller #PIC32 #PIC18
[20/04/2021]

Back in 1999 an old PC ISA NIC card could be upcycled to produce an PIC embedded webserver. Here's one I made back then. Just powered it up - it still works! The two smaller chips are MAX232 serial level converter and 24FC256 EEPROM to store the web pages.

#microchip #pic18 #IoT
[27/05/2020]

Trying out the new PIC18F27Q43 micro-controller, with its enhanced peripherals and features. Though currently it can only be programmed and debugged using a PICkit4 or ICD4, earlier programmers are sadly not supported.

#PIC18 #Microchip #Atmel #IoT #Microcontroller #Electronics
[26/04/2020]

My homebrew digital VSWR and power meter. The display board shown here houses the LCD display and buttons for the user interface. The PIC is running code written in the C programming language. Thank you K&R.

#100DaysOfCode #CPlusPlus #Cpp #HamRadio #AmateurRadio #hamr #PIC18
[19/02/2020]

My homebrew digital VSWR and power meter, shown here while under development. It has a 90dB range, measures from uW to kW. Thank you Microchip and Analog Devices.

#HamRadio #AmateurRadio #hamr #Microchip #PIC18 #AD8307
[16/02/2020]

Home designed GPS disciplined oscillator now done and dusted. The blue LED on the front panel indicates a DGPS fix. Outputting a locked 8MHz into the frequency counter. I certainly recommend u-blox NEO-M8P GPS modules!

#hamr #hamradio #microchip #pic18 #u-blox #gps #gpsdo
[26/01/2020]

TO PLAY - PUSH P1.
(For further information see previous tweet.)

#RetroGaming #RetroGames #pic18 #microcontroller #C++
[22/01/2020]

GPS disciplined oscillator taken off yesterday's breadboard and on to stripboard (veroboard). Front panel and mainboard ready to be housed in its awaiting instrument enclosure.

#electronic #microchip #pic18 #microcontroller #ublox #gps #gpsdo
[17/01/2020]

My GPS disciplined oscillator during prototyping. Uses #ublox and #pic18 microcontroller, and a phase-locked-loop to give a rock steady 10MHz output. Plug in USB to work with u-center app. Firmware written in C++.

#electronic #microcontroller #gps #gpsdo #microchip
[16/01/2020]

I am currently busy with a signal processing project, implementing a #FFT.

After working with both companies, I have to say #Microchip has far better documentation, software, and support than #STM.

The #PIC18 chip series is by far my favorite ever, and the #STM32F4xx series really has room for improvement.

#Electronics #SignalProcessing #Embedded #Microcontrollers #Assemply #C++ #C #Development #Tech

Taking Water Cooler UX Into Your Own Hands With Ghidra

Readers not aware of what Ghidra is might imagine some kind of aftermarket water cooler firmware or mainboard - a usual hacker practice with reflow ovens. What [Robbe Derks} did is no less impressive and inspiring: A water cooler firmware mod that adds hands-free water dispensing, without requiring any hardware mods or writing an alternative firmware from scratch.

Having disassembled the cooler, [Robbe] found a PIC18F6527 on the mainboard, and surprisingly, it didn't have firmware readback protection. Even lack of a PICkit didn't stop him - he just used an Arduino to dump the firmware, with the dumper code shared for us to reuse, and the resulting dumps available in the same repository.

From there, he involved Ghidra to disassemble the code, while documenting the process in a way we can all learn from, and showing off the nifty tricks Ghidra has up its sleeves. Careful planning had to be done to decide which functions to hook and when, where to locate all the extra logic so that there's no undesirable interference between it and the main firmware, and an extra step taken to decompile the freshly-patched binary to verify that it looks workable before actually flashing the cooler with it.

The end result is a water cooler that works exactly as it ought to have worked, perhaps, if the people defining its user interaction principles were allowed to make it complex enough. We could argue whether this should have been a stock function at all, but either way, it is nice to know that we the hackers still have some of the power to make our appliances friendly -- even when they don't come with an OS. Certainly, every single one of us can think of an appliance long overdue for a usability boost like this. What are your examples?

We've covered quite a few Ghidra-involving hacks, but it never feels like we've had enough. What about patching an air quality meter to use Fahrenheit? Or another highly educational write-up on cracking GBA games? Perhaps, liberating a Linux-powered 4G router to reconfigure it beyond vendor-defined boundaries? If you have your own goal in mind and are looking to start your firmware reverse-engineering journey, we can say with certainty that you can't go wrong with our HackadayU course on Ghidra.

#microcontrollers #ghidra #pic #pic18mcu #picmicrocontroller #pic18 #pickit3 #reverseengineering #watercooler

Tip: If you are trying to read the serial output of a #pic18 rs232 stuff with an @arduino wired up to it, make sure your inverse bit flag it switched to "true" on the software serial initialization.

Yay now we can read and stream the hummingbird detectors around gamboa!