This is the heart of the OpenLab. A microcontroller is placed in this board and all other boards have a connection with this board.
PIC Board is the brain of the OpenLab. It contains PIC microcontroller, SD Card interface, RTC, EEPROM and other external connectors. Following interfaces are available in PIC Board.
PIC Board has following features
PICkit supports all programmer variations including ICSP, USB, Bootloader, and Debuggers. The ICSP port is used for the In-Circuit serial programming and USB programmer.
Bootloader uses the USB port and Debuggers can be interfaced using the RJ 11 port.
Read more about Programmer support in OpenLab
PICKIT uses ICSP feature of the PIC microcontrollers. Programming can be done by without removing the Microcontroller from the circuit. There is a switch for selecting the programming mode and power up mode.
PICKit supports SD card interfacing. It has an SD card section which is ready to be interfaced and can be interfaced by 4 jumpers. It supports SD Card and microSD with an SD adapter.
DS1307 Real Time Clock helps to keep track of time without utilizing microcontroller resources. It has a battery backup for offline time tracking.
AT24C16A, 16KB EEPROM can be used for extra data storage. It uses I2C interface and supports only low-speed transfers.
PIC Board contains a USB port for implementing USB based applications. It supports PIC18F4550, PIC18F2550 and other USB enabled processors. But this cannot be used for programming purposes except the case of Bootloader. The bootloader used USB communication to transfer the code to the flash memory.
PICKIT is equipped with a serial port which can be used as a port for communication between Microcontroller and serial port. The MAX232 is translating the voltage levels to RS-232 and TTL level.
Following external ports are available as connectors and ports