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  • Author Author: VictoriaJones
  • Date Created: Date Created
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chipKIT™︎ Pi – the Technicals

VictoriaJones

chipKITimage Pi from Microchip and element14

 

As Raspberry Piimage sales continued to rocket we started to try and define what an add-on board might look like (with most of these discussions taking place in the Premier Farnell canteen over numerous cups of coffee or by squeezing in time-zone friendly conference calls with the US team). We all knew that we wanted something using a similar form factor to the Arduinoimage / chipKITimage but we also wanted it to mate with the Raspberry Pi’s I/O connector.

 

We also wanted to differentiate ourselves from mainstream Arduino boards so we chose to use a 28-pin dip PIC32 MCU. Using a DIP MCU kept the product well within the hobbyist domain (how many folk can solder fine pitch parts on their kitchen table?!). Price, needless to say, was also an issue so to keep the board as low cost as we could; we used as many Microchip components as possible.

 

Downloading the completed sketch code onto the chipKIT Pi was always going to be done via the UART on the Raspberry Pi – this would keep the Pi USB ports free for other things. This meant we could conveniently sit the chipKIT Pi over the Raspberry Pi, as long as we positioned the I/O socket on the chipKIT Pi correctly.

 

The PICimage MCU would feature a boot loader and would be placed in boot loader mode by pressing certain buttons on the chipKIT Pi.  The idea was that this would create a nice neat solution that would also be reasonably rugged – but of course we had to consider exactly how this was done without compromising on the boards compatibility with chipKIT / Arduino shields. To help this, various voltage regulators were added to the board, pretty much replicating the circuit on the chipKIT UNO. Other changes included looking at status LEDs as well as providing access to the other Raspberry Pi I/O. Just as on other chipKITs, we provided ICSP (In Circuit Serial Programming) pins to allow the MCU to be reflashed onboard. The other major change made was in adding a USB connector with the eventual aim of allowing the board to work within MPIDE on a Windows platform.

 

With the ideas flowing and momentum pushing forward, the design brief was fired over to Embest for board design and the manufacture kick off.

 

 

Mike McGlade – Senior Regional Channel Manager

  • in reply to Former Member

    1) It can definitely work stand-alone - just supply electrical power. It can be programmed from any platform that runs MPIDE - such as Raspberry Pi, Windows, Linux and Mac OS.

    2) The ChipKit Pi can plug onto a Raspberry Pi, but does not need this to work. It also has arduino compatible connectors that allow arduino shields to be plugged in. The MPIDE is virtually the same as the standard arduino IDE, so it is just like programming an arduino. As far as I know, the arduino IDE does not run on an arduino or a ChipKit Pi - it needs a bigger host computer.

    3) Any arduino or ChipKit Pi can be used as a programmer for PIC or AVR microcontrollers, but this is an application you would need to implement or copy from many examples on the internet.

    5) The ICSP connector on ChipKit Pi is not populated (you have to install the connector if you want to use it)

    6) This ICSP connector is to program the ChipKit Pi - it is NOT to allow the ChipKit Pi to program other targets.

     

    The ChipKit Pi is a powerful arduino compatible computer (much faster than arduinos) so it can do anything an arduino can do and do it faster plus it can connect directly to a raspberry pi and add an expanded I/O scheme and allow the pi to use arduino shields.

  • in reply to perronj2

    @John-Paul Perron,

      Hope you got the answer. But in case someone else hits this, Raspian can be booted and follow this guide:

    If you are using a SD card larger than 2GB, you will need to expand your SD card to make full use of the storage space. Sadly, the official guide of resizing flash partition didn’t work for me. But here is my way of resizing:

    Boot into Raspberry Pi and login. Don’t go into graphical interface mode.

    Enter the following command to get into Raspberry config:

     

    sudo raspi-config

     

    You will see the familiar config screen when you first boot up your Raspberry pi. Next, select the following:

    expand_rootfs           Expand root partition to fill SD card

    Raspberry pi will automatically expand your SD card to make full use of storage space. Once this is done, issue a restart command to reboot:

     

    sudo shutdown -r now

     

    Done!

     

    Clem

  • in reply to lbittner

    Hi Lauren,

     

    Do you know where / how to expand the partitions of the element14 rasbian/mpide image? The per-partioned image is almost useless for me, 50mb of free space? I have an 8Gb SD card and I want to use a Python GUI I designed to control the chipkit_pi, but I have no file space to upload this program. Any help would be great otherwise I'm afraid the chipkit_pi was a waste of my time.

     

    Regards,

    John-Paul

  • Hi.

     

    I'm Jean-Yves, my native langage is french so can you be tolerant if i am not very clear!

     

    Many questions on that Chipkit Pi board :

     

    1) can it work alone : i mean without raspberry Pi with MPIDE program?

    2) It is made to program arduino chips? That's it?

    if so what kind of chips? where could i see supported references?

    3) If so can it program also Baseline, Midrange, and advanced Microchip chips?

    4) In not : why? Is it so different?

    5) In the same idea what permits ICSP connector and what are the strange seeked golden pads wholes relative to ICSP on the board?

    6) ICSP : Is it for output to external boards or input from external boards.

     

    Or may i am completly out of subject but i really don't understant what this miracle board could do.

    Really Sorry!

     

    I builded a programmer/tester by  and for my own and have a Chipkit PI at home since 2 month but do not know yet if it will be usable for my needs.

     

    Any help would be appreciable

     

    Thank you very much in advance.

     

    jeanyves.

  • In your document "Chipkit  V3.37B.PDF" the block diagram shows the PIC used as the PIC32MX220F032B. The schematic however shows the advertised device PIC32MX250F128B. Was this an oversite during the design process?