Reviews for Advanced PIC Microcontroller Projects in C: From USB to RTOS with the PIC 18F Series

1. GREAT FOR BEGINNERS

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, April 12rd, 2010

   This is a great book but has the wrong title. It is good for anybody who has never used PIC technology or C before. The style is easy-to-read and he covers the basics very well.
   
   He also introduced me to the excellent Mikroelektronika (mikroe dot com). Their EasyPIC6 board is the best available. I bought it and I am using the their compilers. They also give their books free online.
   
   Dare I go against the experts? There is not a book on the market that does not have mistakes. Nobody's inflammable.
   
   If you want to get started with PIC technology this is as good as it gets.

2. 1/10 Needs more work !

   Rated 1 out of 5 stars, July 12st, 2009

   This reviewer is 56 years old and has programmed in assembler for over 30 years first with 6502, 6809 then PICs.
   
   The book I found shared much in common with other books on 'C'" where the author is more interested in showing how clever they are than explaining what can be very complex concepts in simple terms rather than juggling the original sentence into a new set of words.
   I lost count of the grammatical errors.
   
   Code segments simply 'appear' relating to a topic from following pages interspersed with words from the current topic.
   The layout is poor, the explanations non existent and the advice contradictory.
   
   This book tries to be a C primer AND a path to more complex stuff and fails on both counts.
   
   The inexplicably large section on USB which in brevity is meaningless is better covered in a free download about FTDi chips which ends ..."Treat the chip like a serial port" and that's it.
   There are books dedicated to USB that are three times as thick as this entire publication.
   
   The book 'deals' with serial data (and gets the maths wrong) then fails to even mention CTS and RTS which is part of the serial spec required for full speed operation and flow rate control.
   
   I was bitterly disappointed.
   A Section about a breadboard? are you joking?

3. Massive Disapointment

   Rated 1 out of 5 stars, October 12th, 2008

   This book was sadly a massive disappointment. The title implies that the book is for the more advanced user, and will cover topics that extend beyond the basic and standard lighting up an LED, or using the UART. It does, but way too briefly.
   
   This book is over 500 pages long, and more than 300 pages of it are very basic. It begins with a description of what a microcontroller is. Surely someone buying a book called 'Advanced Microcontroller Projects' will know! To rub it in, even chapter 7 is titled 'Simple Projects'. The advanced topics do not begin until after this, over 300 pages in.
   
   But the real crime of this book is the way too brief coverage of the two topics that are specifically mentioned on the front cover. Coverage of USB and RTOS is relegated to the last two chapters, and the RTOS section only gets 16 pages!!!
   
   This book sadly does not live up to it title in the slightest way, and so I returned it. It has a very misleading title, and is for the basic user, with some intermediate projects briefly covered at the end.

4. fails to deliver

   Rated 2 out of 5 stars, June 12th, 2008

   Brought this book as a intro to the PIC18 (been using 16's for years), and in particular for the USB and CAN coverage.
   
   While it gives a good intro to the PIC18, it spends too much time looking at demo/development boards and ICSP programming tools from various manufacturers, before arbitarily choosing to use MikroC and its own ICSP pod, no reasons given. Choosing to use Microchip's own MPLAB abd MPLAB C18 would have been a better choice, as the user could then use the low cost Pickit2 pod instead of one costing twice as much.
   
   The sections covering USB and CAN failed to deliver the required information, and prefered to hide behind pre written functions specific to MikroC instead of explaining the requiste registers and how the are configured. The section covering RTOS is not worthy of being included in the title, again just skims the surface with no real substance.
   
   Overall a waste of money.