Matrix user forums

Ramon Hartopp-Sancho
to all out there
31 August 2012
Hi. I have just purchased a MATRIX VERSION 3 PICmicro MCU development board (sans a pcu yet) and it came with an E-BLOCK USER GUIDE. This does not seem right to me, because the documentation does not make any reference to the above that I own- Version 3 Picmicro MCU. I looked on Google and found this... http://www.matrixmultimedia.com/datashe ... 8-30-3.pdf. It is of some help. But my Q is; Is there an instruction booklet from MATRIX for the VER 3 MCU board like the seemingly wrong one that has been included, that of the E-Blocks User guide, with my Ver 3 Picmicro MCU. Please assist me to clarify this for me because I am a COMPLETE NOVICE (despite my HNC+ Cert that I gained in July 1998 in Electronics Eng) Thank you for your time and patience. Sincerely. Ramon.

Hello Ramon,

The HP488 board is part of the E-blocks family, it functions in exactly the same way when used with Flowcode, it is essentially an EB006 (Pic multimprogrammer) with the other E-blocks built into the circuitry rather than plugged in individually like the E-blocks are.

Each of the 'components' of the HP488 are attached to a certain port from the datasheet you linked, you can find out which parts of the board are attached to which port.

Eg:
1 x EB005 LCD is attached to Port B
2 x EB007 Switch boards, one attached to Port A, the other to Port B
1 x EB008 7-seg Display attached to both Port A and Port B

Using this information you can then attach the components in Flowcode to the appropriate Port on the HP488.

Port C and Port D are available to attach other E-blocks too if you so wish, but this will require a chip with access to Ports C and D (if you are using the default 16F88 then it only has Port A and Port B).

That is basically it for the differences between E-blocks and Flowcode, if you can keep these differences in your mind then using the HP488 should be identical to using E-blocks, just with less flexibility around locating the hardware.

If you are a beginner i would recommend the free online course: Introduction to Microcontrollers

http://www.matrixmultimedia.com/courses/itm/index.php

We have some training videos for Flowcode here:

http://www.matrixmultimedia.com/lc_index.php?p=7

Flowcode Examples are available here:

http://www.matrixmultimedia.com/lc_index.php?p=18

A great post for common starter mistakes from one of our forum users here:

http://www.matrixmultimedia.com/mmforum ... =26&t=6936

If you have any more questions or just want some advice on a project, please feel free to post!