For those that don't know, the PICmicro is a programmable microcontroller. A very powerful PIC is what drives the FRC Robot Controller and OI. There also very cheap, even the most powerful and expensive ones cost under $10 and most of the common ones cost a buck or so. You can Google PIC and find a huge amount of projects and information for PICs. Interested? well, there is a good cheep way to learn pics i just found.
Microchip has a nice starter kit called
PICKit 2 Starter Kit. It includes a USB Programmer, the MPLAB IDE, and a bunch of lessons to learn the basics of ASM for the PIC.
So whats the good deal? Well most online retailers sell the kit for 49.99. But Newark electronics sells it for 39.99 (
Link Here ) But to make this even a better deal, Newark included 9 samples of other PICmicros. Even a 40 pin, and 2 SMT PICs. I picked up this kit a few days ago and im already very happy with it! its a great learning tool!
(sorry if this sounds like a sales pitch, just trying to pass on a good deal to anyone who wants to learn pics!)