Preparing for Development

It would be nice to be able to jump right into building projects and using our microcontroller. However, before we do so, we need to properly set up our environment for working. This chapter is catered to people who have used microcontroller platforms such as Arduino, PICAXE, or Basic Stamp-based platforms and want to build bare-bones microcontroller systems. Beginners should have no trouble following along though. If you have experience breadboarding circuits using ICSP tools or have previously used PIC microcontrollers, you may skip this chapter. However, I strongly recommend that you read this chapter, as it provides a lot of insight as to what you need as well as getting everything prepared.