q. My computer won't recognize my Velleman PIC programmer

QUESTION:

My computer won't recognize my Velleman PIC programmer. What should I do?

ANSWER:

I've built a number of Velleman kits and they work flawlessly. But soldering quality and precision placement of the electrical elements on the PCB are of outmost importance.

Velleman offers a number of programmer boards:

EDU10 - USB PIC PROGRAMMER AND TUTOR BOARD

K8048 - PIC PROGRAMMER & EXPERIMENT BOARD

K8076 - PIC PROGRAMMER BOARD

PICKIT3 - USB PIC 'IN-CIRCUIT' PROGRAMMER AND DEBUGGER

VM111 - PIC® PROGRAMMER AND EXPERIMENT BOARD

VM134 - PIC™ PROGRAMMER BOARD

PIC10F200-I/PG - 8-BIT MICROCHIP MICROCONTROLLER PIC10F200

PIC12F629 - 8 PIN DIP FLASH BASED 8BIT CMOS PIC CONTROLLER

PIC16F627A -18P DIP FLASHPIC 1KX14 WITH 128BYTE EEPROM

PIC16F630-I/P - 14-PIN FLASH-BASED 8BIT CMOS CONTROLLER

…..

Most of Velleman kit programmers connect to a RS232 port, which is not present on majority of new PCs. If you are using USB to RS232 adapter, it may not be sufficient to perform programming. Read the kit instructions to determine, if the kit supports such an adapter.

USB programmer is a far better choice. If you buy a kit programmer with USB, it is important to check, whether it is properly connected to the PC USB controller. It is a human interface device that uses Windows driver; you should always be able to find it amongst connected devices immediately after you plug it to an USB port.

Other USB devices require prior installation of device drivers. If a device driver fails to install, a device would not be able to connect.

There can also be software issues. Some programming applications are not compatible with all Windows (or other operating system's) versions. There is also diminishing support for RS232 applications.

ALTERNATIVES:

As you can see Velleman even resells Microchip PICkit3. The latter is on my opinion far the best choice, since it is cheap and it supports almost all Microchip microcontrollers, including the 32-bit PIC32 family. Though you have to build suitable programming headers yourself, it is easy and it is worth it.

It is even possible to program PIC18F24J50 on Velleman K8055, or to turn the board into a programmer with a simple adapter. You can also find programming headers for PIC18F2xJ50 and PIC32MX2xxFxxB microcontrollers programming on this website.

There are also many other possibilities for building you own PIC programmer described in section 1 on this website.