eL33t

Favourite game: Starcraft: Broodwar (Yeah, that's right I said it) Favourite OS: My favorite is Ubuntu, but all my machines run XP because I am to busy to swtich Favourite console: My modded Xbox Nationality: Mars Sex: Male Age:26 Race: Martian Height: 6'3 Status: In a relationship Build: Proportional to the size of my feet Favourite band: Phish Favourite book: Fundamentals of Astrodynamics Favourite author(s): Roger R.Bate, Donald D. Mueller, Jerry e. White (Authors of above mentioned book) Favourite movie: Apollo 13 Favourite director: N/A Favourite TV Show: The Office Favourite actor: Steve Carrell Favourite Comedian: Mitch Hedburg (That man made me laugh. Hard. "Escalators can never really brake, they simply become inconvenient.") Other hobbies: Cleaning up my messes from the hobbies I wish I had time to do. Car: 99 ZX2 Occupation: DBA (But I have a EE degree)

Sorry, been super busy lately. Hopefully I will get more free time soon to pursue this further. When I post again, I am going to outline how to go about setting up a PIC to do some basic, and some moderately complicated things. In fact, I think that I am going to write a complete tutorial on how to use them, along with some basic electrical theory, since they can be used for so many amazing things. In the mean time, if you want to further your knowledge about them, head over to the microchip forums (I posted a link above) and I am sure that there is a thread on how to get started. Also check out www.nutsvolts.com it is a great intro magazine to electronics with an online version that is pretty affordable. Sometimes they have some pretty sweet projects that make me wish I had more time. I will be back in a few weeks...

I found these http://www.pjrc.com/tech/8051/ide/ http://www.microchip.com/stellent/idcplg?I...wwwFullSpeedUSB http://support2.microchip.com/KBSearch/KB_...D=SQ6UJ9A00BAWI WARNING PDF http://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/AppNotes/01045a.pdf WARNING PDF http://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/AppNotes/01003a.pdf This last one is their forum on interfacing with USB devices. Just thought that I should post a direct link to it for less confusion. http://forum.microchip.com/tt.aspx?forumid=102

The other thing you might want to consider (since you are new to all of this), is a demo board from Microchip. It has everything you need on the board, which will allow you to quickly acclimate to microcontrollers. Basically it takes out the learning curve involved with getting one all wired up, and gets you straight to the coding. Which I think is very important. Here is their page with some(?) of their demo boards. http://www.microchip.com/stellent/idcplg?I...wwwPICmicroDemo Good Luck!

Well seeing as how you are a noob ;) to the whole world of microcontrollers, I feel that I should at least let you know that there are different brands. If you haven't picked up on it by now, my favorite is Microchip. The other major one amongst the people I know is Atmel. There are many others though from companies like Maxim, Motorola, Texas Instruments, etc... A quick look at Digikey shows 20 different manufactures of microcontrollers, who all have many different product lines. Why do I prefer Microchip over Atmel's and the others? It's because it's the brand I have used the most. I started out by taking a class, whose programming was done on a MC68HC11 (Motorola) coding with opcodes and operands explicitly in hex. That class was an invaluable tool, because it forced me to learn how to code at the lowest level possible. After that class however, a different professor and now good friend turned me on to Microchip. I have never looked back, because Microchip has this great Integrated Development Environment (IDE) that I have become very accustom too. Their IDE made it very easy to write, debug, and edit code for me; and this I liked. They have available for free their MPLAB/IDE software http://www.microchip.com/stellent/idcplg?I...p;part=SW007002 It lets you write, debug, and edit all your code; but also lets you simulate it on any one of their products. I highly recommend that you download this, read the tutorials on where to get started, and get coding! This brings me to your question of which programming language to learn. I highly recommend that you stick to assembly, and here are my reasons. [li]I found it very easy to learn, because it is very logical. You tell it to put 1 here and 2 there add them together and put the answer here.[/li] [li]It gives you very intimate control over the Microcontroller, which really helps to solidify in your head everything that is going on inside it. [/li] [li] I can write a program to accomplish the exact same thing in assembly, that was written in "C", and mine will be much much faster.[/li] With microcontrollers you generally have three options, assembly, C, and BASIC. With Microchip (as far as I know) only assembly and "C" are available. You can always learn "C" later, and your knowledge of assembly will allow you much more control over your device. You can also include modules of code that were written in assembly inside of your "C" code to speed up certain areas. So if you want to skip straight to the guts, you are going to need [li] A breadboard[/li] [li]A 5V linear voltage regulator[/li] [li]Your chip. I don't think it matters right now which one you get. You can always buy another one for less than $5[/li] [li]Pull up resistor 1kohm for the Mclr pin on the chip[/li] [li]Some way to program the chip... Hmm... I use their ICD (In Circuit Debugger) to do my programming. Let me think about that one, because the ICD is like $120. I think you can pre load chips with certain code to allow you to flash them via USB. I'll get back to you.[/li] [li]Read the datasheet, read the datasheet, read the datasheet![/li] Most of the stuff can be found at the all powerful Digikey I will give you more information later. I have to catch some Zzzz....

Alrighty, you lucked out. 1st I had a descent amount of time this weekend to sit down and sift through some things. Here are the things I found / my comments, etc... The VNC1L you picked has a max transfer rate of 12Mbps(USB 2.0 FullSpeed). Is that sort of transfer rate acceptable for your application, because USB2.0 accepts up to 480Mbps; just not through this chip. I couldn't find out any detailed specs regarding the PSP's USB, except that it was USB 2.0, so maybe 12Mbps is all the PSP can handle? I dunno? Microchip makes several chips that can do USB 2.0 at 12Mbps, and since it is a serial type bus, you can daisy chain devices to your hearts content. Here is the page listing all of the USB capable chips http://www.microchip.com/ParamChartSearch/...n&pageId=74 They all have a ton of extra features that you may find entertaining, but all at least support usb2.0. Using one of these chips negates your need for the VNC1L device, as the PIC has all of that already. I looked at this families datasheet for my opinions (warning PDF) http://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/DeviceDoc/39632D.pdf I chose it at random, so it does not reflect a final decision for my recommendation. I just used it to familiarize my self with the hardware. 2nd I have been wanting to do some interfacing with Microchips USB devices for a while for use with a custom application on a PC via USB. (Robotic control / telescope aiming, tracking, etc...) In addition to interfacing a PIC with large storage like Compact Flash or the like. So I will be glad to provide any information I can, short of doing the project for you. Also, I mean this in as friendly a way as possible. Since you are working with the PSP, I will not help you circumvent any sort of hardware/software/protection or help to install this usbhostfs. I can however help guide you to learn how to do it your self if that is something you wish to do. Let me know if you have any questions, etc... I will post more information regarding this subject as I tinker with it over the next few weeks. Good luck!

I have used PIC's extensively for robotic control, and the best place to find info on them are the forums at microchip. hxxp: forum. microchip. com/ There are many experts on there that can give you more information than you ever wanted. Some of them are sort of arrogant however and will simply direct you to the datasheet for whatever chip you are using. Their datasheets are extremely helpful, but sometimes they are like reading legal documents, i. e. not for the faint of heart. I have never used or heard of this VDIP1 you speak of, but if you can provide more information I will be more than glad to help. For all of my programming I have used Microchip's MPLAB-IDE, and have done all my programming in assembly. Good luck!