CIKU

Great news for PIC microcontroller lover. CIKU is for you.

Named after a type of tropical fruit, sweet and brown in color. Normally known as  "sapodilla", we call it "CIKU" in Malaysia.

CIKU is PIC18F4550 based Arduino form factor starter kit for hobbiyst, student, developer or any maker that likes to use PIC microcontroller and want to utilize Arduino shield. We acknowledge and appreciate the ease of hardware interface provided by hundreds of Arduino shield out there. I am sure PIC lover would like to utilize these shields, and with CIKU, you will have it.

CIKU is born from the experiences of using Arduino and feedback we gather from SK40C users. Ciku comes with PIC18F4550 pre-programed with Microchip USB HID Bootloader and with this, loading program will only require a USB Mini-B cable, no extra programmer is needed. This will lower the cost needed to get start. It reserves the PICkit2/3 6-way ICSP pads for those that like to use ICD or PICkit2/3 to load program.

To utilize Arduino shield, CIKU has been designed based on Arduino form factor, the side female headers, pin assignments, 5V, 3.3V, Reset and GND are compatible with Arduino UNO. Furthermore, to provide the feel of Arduino environment, we are developing library for Ciku with MPLAB X IDE and XC8 Compiler (both are free IDE and compiler from Microchip). You will be able to use the pinMode(1, OUTPUT) and analogRead(A1) as in Arduino IDE. It is not 100% software compatible, we are trying to minimize the transition effort needed. And it is open source, we welcome and invite everyone that love CIKU to help and contribute in library development, and share it, any form of feedbacks are more than welcome.

Do check the user's manual and tutorials to get started with Ciku.

Features and Specifications:

• Comes with pre-programmed PIC18F4550 with USB bootloader.

• PIC18F4550 running at 48MHz (after PLL with 10MHz external crystal).

• Power via USB or external DC adapter (7 - 12V).

• On board 5V 800mA (Max 1A) voltage regulator.

• On board 3.3V 500mA (Max 500mA) voltage regulator.

• USB mini-B receptor for USB connection.

• 20 digital I/O pins.

• 6 analog input pin.

• 2 PWM output pin.

• Standard Arduino UNO R3 header, able to utilize Arduino shield.

• Extra pads with standard 0.1” (2.54 mm) pitch to pitch.

• 32KByte flash/program memory (~28K after bootloader).

• On board Power, Run and programmable LED.

• Reset button and bootloader button for entering USB bootloader mode.

• Program with MPLAB X IDE and XC8 compiler (library is open source and provided)

• Program loading via USB HID, GUI from Microchip provided.

• PICkit standard ICSP 6-way pads for direct program loading (optional)

Compatible Shields: We are trying hard and will continue to develop the library  to ensure the compatibility of Arduino shields, but due to differences of microcontroller's architecture, it is not 100% compatible. Here, we have listed down the shields that we have tested.

• LCD Keypad Shield

• 2A Motor Driver Shield

• Cytron XBee Shield, most Xbee shield should be compatible

• Cytron G15 Shield

• 10A Motor Driver Shield

•  PS2 Shield

Tutorials:

• Getting Started with CIKU

• CIKU - Create New Project from Scratch

• Ciku + LCD Keypad Shield

• CIKU + 2A Motor Shield, build a line following robot

• CIKU + Mifare Reader/Writer CR038

Check out the getting started: