Xmas present from Digi-Key, #digi-wish

Pickit 3 package

During Christmas 2013 season the Digi-key run a Digi-Wish competition which I took part. And as amazing it seems to be, I happened to win. I asked for either a FPGA-devkit or Pickit 3 demo kit and I got the latter one.

So, here are some pictures of the packet and the content. This bundle was delivered by DHL some days ago.

Naked Pickit 3 and devboard

Pickit 3 comes bundled with the nice looking Pic18 demo board and red usb-cable. The included Mplab programming environment CD apparently contains version 8 of the software, which I don't really need since I have for some time ago downloaded the latest version Mplab-X from Microchip site. 

Comparison shot Pickit2 vs Pickit3

As seen from the pictures I also took the Pickit 3 apart immediately and compared it to my old Pickit 2, looks like they have done quite a bit changes between product version.

The Pickit 2 uses an Pic18F2550 micro controller, that is on higher end amongst 8 bit Pic chips.

While the Pickit 3 has 24FJ256GB106, which is 16 bit micro controller with USB OTG port in it. There are also a lot of unused pins and peripherals at the Pickkit 3 controller, so I have to wonder didn't they find any simpler/smaller chip for this version of programmer.

Pic18 demo board

The demo board that came alongside Pickit 3 looks real good, with smooth gold finish and black solder mask. I have not yet any project for this, but I'll need to check the  Pic18F45K20 datasheets and see what this particular chip can do. So far I have only used those low end Pic16 series on all my projects and I'm quite sure there will be some differences.




I also did record video of the unboxing and Pickit 3 tear down/review. I will add the link here as soon as I have edited and uploaded it to Youtube.

Edit.. The viedeo quality was so bad (flickering etc.) that I decided not to make it public. I have no idea what happened... But the material was more/less ruined.