timothyweber.org

Note: This page is obsolete, but I’m leaving it up for history. My current solution for automated control is here.

Microchip’s PICkit 2 is a good, cheap PIC programmer. One nice thing about it is that they’ve made the source code available. So you can tweak it if it doesn’t suit you.

In order to integrate it with the SourceBoost IDE, I added this command-line option:

-auto my-hex-file-name.hex

This will load the named file, write it to the chip, and verify. If there’s any error, the registered “System Exclamation” sound will play; otherwise, the registered “System Notification” sound will play and the app will exit.

It’s not polished, but it’s handy.

Disclaimer: Microchip does not specify redistribution terms in the source code. So I’m guessing that making this modification available here is OK with them (because they’ve made the source available and there are a couple of other versions of the app around), but I have not checked with them.

The ZIP file contains the EXE file; just replace your existing “PICkit 2.exe” with that. (Maybe rename the original one instead of deleting it, just in case - I make no warranties, etc.)

The ZIP file also contains a Unified Diff file showing the changes I made. It’s a little messy, since a lot of lines were touched with whitespace changes, but it should help if you want to work with my changes. You’ll need the original source from Microchip, Borland C++Builder 6, and the Windows Device Driver Kit (DDK).