#118 A look at different types of programmers
Over the years I have used different programmers for PIC,AVR,ST,ESP and WCH microcontrollers from simple FTDI TX RX programming to more advanced PICKit 5 dedicated programmers.
All the different types have their pros and cons but by far the most used by me is the cheap FTDI and serial TTL types for example programmers using the CH340, PL2303 and FT232 IC’s
Though the PL2303 is outdated there’s still many floating around and certain applications require the IC like when interfacing with old radios.
With that being said you may ask why do we need a dedicated programmer? Well it depends…
Using the cheap common options I just mentioned above is good enough for a hobbyist but when you design a product you want something that’s is reliable common and has a guaranteed life span with support for the foreseeable future so that you will always have parts available for projects and the programmer.
Another big point is uniformity, dedicated programmers will usually be using parts with certain thresholds and voltages + current etc. all that data will be kept constant and accurate while a cheap programmer will most likely have a huge threshold..
A very important point is the ISP + debugging. A dedicated programmer will be able to do programming and debugging easily with a few pins. While a cheap programmer will require more pins and many times 2x programmers… 1 for debugging and 1 for programming.
Dedicated programmers also have full support by the IC company as long as you have an original also they offer some really useful features like the PicKit5’s blue tooth option and stand alone programming or changing of source binaries on a phone.
All you need is the programmer and a phone is optional if you need to change things like binaries but really you can give a pickit5 to any technician and they can easily update supported IC’s without needing to mess around on a desktop/laptop computer. This is a very useful feature.
Now there also are EEPROM programmers and true universal programmers that can do EEPROMS and MCU’s like the old TL866II Plus which has a list here of all the supported IC’s. These programmers work well and allow easy access for single IC’s some can also read and write when an IC is in circuit but others require de-soldering. These programmers are usually quite large with Zif sockets.
Now I just mentioned a few examples there is much more to talk about but I’m not going to be writing books here…