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chipKIT Challenge PLEASE USE MPIDE & NOT MPLAB

19 Jan 2012

chipKIT Cha ...

United Kingdom

Hello to all chipKIT Challenge entrants!

Our appologies for any confusion regarding tools for the chipKIT.  It appears some of you may have had a flyer insert in your kit that referes to MPLAB IDE. The competition requires you to use MPIDE and not Microchip MPLAB. We have also corrected our website.

UPDATED Message: 20Th Jan

NOTE from the chipKIT Challenge Panel

MPLAB ENTRIES WILL NOW BE ACCEPTED......

The statement of using MPLAB was incorrect, and was not spotted as early as we had hoped.  For most, we understand that transferring over to MPIDE should be a relatively simple task, and Microchip are working on a post to show how to do this, however we accept that some entrants who have already started using Microchip MPLAB would prefer to continue on this track.  Due to this, the competition panel has agreed to accept entries designed using MPLAB, and ask those who have used MBLAB to state this on their entry.  We will advise all contestants of this.

Further info on MPIDE can be found in our chipKIT Challenge Design Centre and we will post futher details regarding moving MPLAB to MPIDE ASAP.

 

 

Replies

saipan59

United States
15 weeks ago

I quit working on the contest weeks ago, when we were told that we could NOT use MPLAB.

Now I learn today that MPLAB is OK again (as of 11 days ago), but there is no longer time for me to make progress. Like the gentleman from Tubelab (Nice to see you again, sir! I remember you and Jorge from the previous design contest you referred to), I have a full-time job...

BTW, the latest issue of Circuit Cellar came yesterday, and there is a full-page ad that clearly says to use "Microchip MPLAB(r) IDE".

Pete (aka Saipan59)

chipKIT Cha ...

United Kingdom
15 weeks ago

Thanks for your post.  Before the error was spotted, it had already gone to press.  The Digilent chipKIT board is designed to be used with the MPIDE and it was always the intention to use this tool for the competition.  Somewhere along the process, MPIDE was incorrectly changed to MPLAB IDE on some of the competition material, and for this we apologise.

jamodio

United States
15 weeks ago

Unfortunately MPIDE is very limited if you want to integrate other libraries, there is not much done yet in terms of libraries compared with a vast number of resources for MPLAB C32.

To be frank I didn't do much because of this particular reason.

-J

 

cgimark

United States
15 weeks ago

I am glad for this decision to allow mplab projects. When I saw the original correction my heart almost stopped because while the mpide is good for simple task , right now it is limiting what the chip is really capable of doing. I tried to work around the problems on my aquarium controller project but constantly ran into problems where I was spending more time trying to port arduino libraries to the mpide than I was developing the actual project. I was considering just stopping participation because of the workload using just the mpide would have involved, it didn't make sense when the project already worked well under mplab.   

chipKIT Cha ...

United Kingdom
16 weeks ago

See updated post at the top of the page

j.sukuba

Slovakia
16 weeks ago

Fantastic news!

I'll continue to work on my project using MPLAB, but I'll do my best to offer both MPLAB and MPIDE projects in my final entry.

tubelab.com

United States
16 weeks ago

I don't know what's going on here. I sent in an entry to this contest on the first day. I got no response, no acknowledgement, nothing. I posted a question here about my missing entry to find that there are others in the same situation. Then I sent an email to the contest people and got back a reply that my entry was ignored because it didn't fit the contest criteria and had absolutely no chance of winning, but was cool and possibly worthy of publication. If I would accept this, my entry would be allowed and I would receive a kit. I posted this on the forum and forgot about it, deciding not to enter this contest.

About a week later I got an email stating that my entry had been approved and my ChipKit had been shipped. Yes it came with a note in the box that clearly stated that the contest required the use of "Microchip MPLAB". A reply was posted by to my question that stated that on a second review it was found that my entry did indeed fit the contest criteria.

A month and a half of the contest period had elapsed with no confimation that my rather complicated entry was accepted. THere was no way that I could complete it in the remaining time since I have a rather demanding full time engineering job. I dreamed up a new, less ambitous entry that could be completed in the remaining time. It required an LCD and touch screen, so I bought one from Microchip along with an ICD3 and some other stuff. I downloaded MPLAB X, the Microchip graphics library, and their C compiler. I wired some of the hardware up, promptly blew the bootloader out of the ChipKit and started experimenting.

Now that I am making headway again, I get to start over again. I don't think so. I am an excellent hardware designer well versed in older Microchip stuff (first PIC 32 project), but my software skills are rather basic. There is no way that I have the skils to get the MCHP graphics library to work with MPIDE.

I assume that Digilent was a sponsor in this contest, and would like to see their IDE used, but there have been multiple mistakes made in the administration of this contest that have essentially imposed different rules and different deadlines on different compettitors. Now there is this IDE wrinkle. What's fair here? I don't know, but allowing the use of MPLAB since it was clearly stated on the web site at the contest start, and in the ChipKit insert would be good. A deadline extension to compensate us for the delayed start would be good too.

I entered a previous MCHP / Circuit Cellar contest and won a minor prize resulting in a Circuit Cellar magazine article. I feel that my new project (a solar powered ham radio transceiver) would be a contender too if the roadblocks to completion in the required time are removed.

raul7

Bolivia
16 weeks ago

Please consider to leave open which of both IDE's to use to the decision of each participant, because from the beginning you were refering to the use of MPLAB, not MPIDE. In my case I already started to work code in MPLAB, and being PIC32 such a powerful processor I thinks It's not a good idea to limit the posibilities to the use of MPIDE only. To really tackle some power efficiency concepts we need not just the power of the hardware, but also the flexibility and speed of standard C language and compilers.

j.sukuba

Slovakia
16 weeks ago

I would second that.

MPIDE is somehow limiting development platform, what more - changing horse in a middle of race is not a good idea. Suggestion to leave decision of what IDE to use is fair and elegant way of solving this problem, without hurting participants who started developing software in MPLAB and without keeping unexperienced users from start their work.

j.sukuba

Slovakia
17 weeks ago

Hope this is just another typo.

At least two months there is information about using MPLAB, so I'm using it, along with C32 compiler and ICD3. 15,000 lines of source codes in 50 source files, work is done from 80%. Now should I convert it to some kind of MPIDE? Such as huge change of elementary rules in half of contest. Are you serious?