Some time ago, we came across one interesting Instagram video that immediately caught our attention. We rarely see a 15-year-old development board in use nowadays. And our customers often ask us if you can use NECTO Studio with older MIKROE development boards.
Today we are sharing a story that shows you that you can, of course. The story starts when a father wants to learn PIC microcontrollers with his son on the EasyPIC v4 board. In the following text, you can hear from them the experience of working in NECTO Studio, with old hardware:
How It Started
"We had the EasyPIC v4 development board, and we were in a search for IDE. We noticed on the MIKROE website a banner that said 'NECTO Studio 2.0'. We were immediately interested. According to MIKROE, it was the IDEal way of coding. A full IDE for business professionals, students, and makers. It sounded great. We gave the download button a click and installed the software. We wondered if it would work with our old development hardware.
Initially, we saw only EasyPIC v7 onwards listed. But digging a little deeper, we selected the Legacy option for the mikroC compiler and a generic board which allowed us to select the old PIC16F877A fitted to the board on our desk.
My son was interested in what I was up to today so I challenged him to write some code to drive the seven-segment displays. He accepted and wrote this small test program which operates the 7-segment displays via the multiplexing transistors. Within NECTO Studio, we clicked 'Program,' and the code was compiled and flashed to the board with NECTO directly integrating with mikroProg.
Here are the results. Great student coding as it works perfectly and a great IDE solution from MIKROE, which still works with their 15-year-old hardware. We would totally recommend MIKROE. The hardware is packed with features and there will be plenty for the student to learn and develop as their experience grows. NECTO Studio is free for non-commercial use and integrates with this older development board perfectly."
YOU ALSO WANT TO BE FEATURED IN THIS SERIES?
We invite you to share with us your experience with our products and tell us about your successful projects, and we will gladly share it on our website! To be featured in this series, all you have to do is contact us at social@mikroe.com, where you can send us pictures and a description of your project. If you don't have a specific project you can just tell us your overall experience.
Until the next successful story,
Your MIKROE