We're so very excited to say that chipKIT products will be exhibited at the Microchip booth at Maker Faire Bay Area on May 17th & 18th 2014 (Expo Hall, Booth)

A couple of our friends from Digilent will also be at the Microchip booth showing off something really neat with LEDs (take a sneak peek at the image below). You'll just have to stop by to see it in action!

Why do I need to port in the first place?

Arduino is many things but goal that is attempted with the project and not always accomplished is to abstract out the specific details of the Atmel microcontroller used on these boards. Abstracting out the microcontroller has a specific consequence of allowing a beginner to not have to dig in to the details of how the chip works to get a project up and running. It also has an unintended consequence of making the specific microcontroller that is used to implement a solution less relevant. Although the API (Application programmers Interface) for the

Header files listed in alphabetical order. Files are denoted as either (AVR) or (PIC32) specific, if they apply to both platforms they are marked as (AVR|PIC32). For headers that are marked (AVR|PIC32) they can be either "generic" or "ported". Generic files will work on either platform without modification where ported files are different for AVR or PIC32.

avr/interrupt.h (AVR)

avr/io.h (AVR)

avr/progmem.h (AVR)

avr/pgmspace.h (AVR)

Tools to access program space of the AVR processor, not needed on PIC32, but some macros can be used in its place to make AVR code run on a PIC32.

#if defined(__PIC32MX__)

It is possible to create pure C / assembly code for chipKIT boards without MPIDE or MPLAB.

Compiler

Newlib-based chipKIT compiler Example minimal application (contains Makefile, linker scripts, startup code, trivial C app)

Uploading to board

See "Using avrdude from Linux console" section in avrdude and the chipkit article. Example minimal application above has uploading with avrdude integrated

Hello, The MultiWII lib is used to control various multi copters using RC, IMU, motors, servos... It is currently running on Arduino platform and I have started to migrate it on ChipKit. The main difficulty porting this lib is that it is very hardware dependent using special Arduino registers and mechanisms (for example eeprom) that are different on PIC. I have made a first build  Lib MuliWii on ChipKit release Alpha and I will start testing soon. I will keep you posted...