A person named Orion created a nifty utility for programming PIC controllers. PICs, as you may recall are the brains of my robots. Specifically, this program controls the Microchip PicKit™ 1 Flash Starter Kit.
Orion called his software USB PICKIT.
Unfortunately, when Microchip, Inc. updated their software to version 2.0.2, Orion’s software stopped working on the Mac. This is because his comnputer got sent to Alaska. Go figure.
Fortunately, he posted his source code. So I took it and patched it up (which was not too hard, but did require making things more “Mac”centric, because the libusb support on Mac OS X isn’t the same as on Linux. Namely, interrupt mode didn’t seem to be supported.)
So, in order to be a good internet citizen, I’ll put up my Mac OS X version of usb_pickit for others to use.
Download file This is a Mac OS X 10.3 binary file in a zip archive.
For some reason I felt obligated to rename it Ezload. This wasn’t really intentional, oh well.
The way I did this was rather hacky… so I won’t post the source unless someone wants it.
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Update, I’ve cleaned the code a little bit and tried to integrate my changes in a way that won’t break the linux build either.
Download file
This version now has a UI, and as soon as you connect a device it either uploads or downloads. I’m also including all the source and the project file.
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Update, August 2011. The Download link above has been modified to reflect the new location on Google Code.
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8 replies on “USB PicKit tools for Mac OS X”
Thanks for getting this working with the new firmware! Sorry it took a few days for me to approve your comment on SciSpot, but I dread reviewing comments now, thanks to the spam I’m getting too. You even answered a question another reader had, before I’d approved his comment either. Cool.
BTW, great site! I’m adding it to my resources page.
–Woody (www.scispot.org)
I am a little confused about how to us EZLOAD. Could you provide a few more details. I am somewhat familiar with UNIX under OSX but am not a high level programer.
I am interested in working with the PIC10Fxx but would like to use VirtualPC as little as possible. I had been using the K150 which is PC only and moved to PICKit 1 for better product tracking and possible OSX operation.
Thanks,
Royce
Royce–
I haven’t programmed anything but p12f675 with this software. If you download the second link above:
http://arahn.dsl.visi.com/blog/archives/usb_pickit.zip
You’ll have the most recent version of the app. It is a regular Mac app, so you launch it from the Finder. I’ve only ever used the upload feature. Basically put in the path to the hex file (press enter after typing it). Then plug in the USB PicKit Starter Kit and it should automatically program it.
OK, I tried running it as a straight OSX application but it does nothing so I thought it was a UNIX script or something. Maybe I can figure how to compile on my machine and get it running.
Thanks,
Royce
Same as Royce, If I click on the UsbPicKit app it won’t open (It briefly appears in the dock and ends). I tried to build the project with XCode but got several errors – missing usb.h and some other errors. Can you try to recompile it? I got the command line working – but a UI is always nice on a Mac…
Here’s what the console reads when I try to launch the UsbPicKit application:
===== Sat Jan 08 2005 ===== 21:04:40 America/Indianapolis =====
ZeroLink: could not load .o file: /Users/arahn/Andy/Programming/pic/usb_pickit/build/UsbPicKit.build/UsbPicKit.build/Objects-normal/ppc/main-F0638AB0.ob
ZeroLink: could not load .o file: /Users/arahn/Andy/Programming/pic/usb_pickit/build/UsbPicKit.build/UsbPicKit.build/Objects-normal/ppc/UsbPicKitApp.ob
ZeroLink: could not load .o file: /Users/arahn/Andy/Programming/pic/usb_pickit/build/UsbPicKit.build/UsbPicKit.build/Objects-normal/ppc/darwin.ob
ZeroLink: could not load .o file: /Users/arahn/Andy/Programming/pic/usb_pickit/build/UsbPicKit.build/UsbPicKit.build/Objects-normal/ppc/hex.ob
ZeroLink: could not load .o file: /Users/arahn/Andy/Programming/pic/usb_pickit/build/UsbPicKit.build/UsbPicKit.build/Objects-normal/ppc/main-59CDECA8.ob
ZeroLink: could not load .o file: /Users/arahn/Andy/Programming/pic/usb_pickit/build/UsbPicKit.build/UsbPicKit.build/Objects-normal/ppc/pic14.ob
ZeroLink: could not load .o file: /Users/arahn/Andy/Programming/pic/usb_pickit/build/UsbPicKit.build/UsbPicKit.build/Objects-normal/ppc/usb_pickit.ob
ZeroLink: unknown symbol ‘_main’
Chris, sorry about that. Royce and I figured out the problem ( I had the wrong linker settings in XCode. For all those curious about this, be sure to turn off ZeroLink before releasing a build for other people. ZeroLink depends on the object files being present at the same absolute path. ) But I forgot to update the zip file on the blog.
I’ve updated it now.
Sorry Andy,
I just downloaded it from the second link at the top of the page – I still get the same console message… The creation date of the application in the usb_pickit.zip archive is still Dec 11 – like the one I downloaded last week. Is there some latency from when you posted the new one – or is the old zip still up there?
Sorry to be a pain. I hope to get MacJAL and this working to have an OSX native development system in place for PICs.