Velleman K8048 Pic Programmer / Project Board

[corrado33]

Hi all,
I was given this programmer for my birthday and thought I'd share my thoughts about it.
http://www.vellemanusa.com/products/view/?id=500373

I know Dave has reviewed many all purpose programmers on the show, but when someone buys you one of these, you kinda of have to put it together and get it working right?

Anyway, after soldering the DIY kit, I had a ton of trouble getting the stupid thing to work.

First, I'm not a large fan of the velleman brand. I'm not sure why. I've tried finding documentation for a slightly older product of theirs and couldn't find it anywhere, so I got frustrated. Not to mention their quick start guides and manuals suck.

Anyway, my next problem was that I thought the included PIC came preloaded with a demo program. That's wrong, it's blank.

Then I tried using the software that came with the board itself. After setting up the right chip and putting the jumpers in the right position, the software wouldn't read the chip.

I then learned that the software defaults to another type of programmer. (K8076 or something like that). So, I got that changed around and tried again. I tried to read from the chip (not knowing if it was blank or not) and the program complained that the "settings didn't match the chip." Ok... sure... However, it read just fine (configuration settings and all.) Then I erased the chip, the program complained again but it did eventually erase it.

Next, I found the demo programs included with the software and compiled them into hex files with a different included program. That worked fine. (I don't think that program was programmed by velleman.) Well, I tried to compile all three, the one called "BlinkingLED" or similar didn't compile and failed with a few errors... Ok... that's... uh... great...

The next issue I had was that the programming board calls for a 15V regulated or 12V unregulated source. As it turns out, I don't have either of those. All of my 12V sources are regulated and I've never seen a 15V wall wart. After looking up the datasheets for the voltage regulators I find that they'll run find with anything under 25 or 35V (don't remember exactly.) So I use a 19V laptop power supply. I'll come back to this in a second.

So, I load up one of the demo programs in the included software and try to program the chip. The program once again complains that the settings don't match even though I have everything set right, and it fails. I change all of the settings I can think of, still getting the error every time, and still failing ever time.

Ok, lovely. It'll read and erase but not write. So, I download two other pic programming... programs, Progpic2 and PicPGM as mentioned by this guy in this post.

http://forum.velleman.eu/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=7695#p32917

I load up progpic with it's very nice simple interface and open the hex file, select the correct chip and bam, done. Programming successful. I don't know what's up with velleman's software, but it does not work correctly, I'll tell you that much. (And I have tried it since, it still doesn't work regardless of what I do.) I even tried uninstalling and reinstalling.

So back to the power supply issue. Like I said, it calls for 15V regulated or 12V unregulated. In my experience, it'll run on anything from 19.6V to 12.2. I haven't tried anything else, but those are the two power supplies I tried it with and programming was successful with both. So either their documentation is wrong on this one or... I have no idea. I also didn't try other chips or anything as I'm relatively new to PICs, and only have Atmels lying around.

One nice thing they did do was put the resistors in order on the tape so that I didn't have to look at the colors every time (so the first resistor on the tape/ribbon was R1, second was R2) and most of them were different values as well (as can be expected.) That was nice.

So I guess, in the end it worked, but I don't know what's going on with their software. I like the project board type aspect of it. It has a few buttons and LEDs on the board itself so if you're just starting out that's great.

I'd give the board an 7/10 and the software a 2/10 and that's being generous.

I just wanted to get this out there so that maybe people will run across it if they ever have a similar problem. In the end, it's my only PIC programmer, and it'll get used until it dies.

[NadAngel]

When I started programming PIC chips I used the same programmer, but it didn't give me much trouble. The problem is, that the software that comes with it does not support newer PIC chips and is therefore obsolete. I would recommend a PICkit 3 programmer (or a clone) along with MPLABX.