I have an indexer application. It’s an old school meets new school kind of approach, where I need a board that homes on startup and then indexes a programmable number of pulses on the triggering of a GPIO. I like the TIC board because it’s got that PIC combined with the stepper driver in a neat little package. I’m capable of writing firmware, I know the source code for the GUI is on GIT, but nothing else is. Either way, I’d probably opt for a really simple command line setup.
The answer I’m looking for from you is more of a “should I even bother” yes or no. I don’t even know if the programming pins are broken out. I could also spin up a board, but I’d really rather learn how to use MPLAB.
We will probably add scripting features to the Tic in a future firmware update so that you can program it to do things like that without writing your own firmware. We do not have a specific plan for when that firmware update would be available.
In the meantime, it is certainly possible for you to program the Tic using standard development tools. You would have to get a PIC programmer and connect it to the right pins (some of which are only accessible as vias). The Tic’s firmware is not open source so you would have to program all the features you need from scratch. After using a PIC programmer to load your own firmware, you would not be able to restore our firmware to the board.
It looks like the programming vias are fully under solder mask and connected to the stepper driver to boot, so who knows if it would even work. I doubt you guys are using a bootloader too.
Thanks for your help on this one - Seems like it’s a “don’t bother” on this pass. The upside is that I can route boards from home
