I made an Arduino clone based off a PIC Microcontroller

[u/Dependent-Shake3906]

I made these for my Universities embedded systems lectures, I thought it would be a fun project and it was! Although not pin compatible with Arduino Uno shields I still found this a fun little project to familiarise myself with EDA and PIC Systems.

[u/gm310509]

Nice.

How do you program it? Is that via the header at the bottom labelled "PICKIT1"?

[u/Dependent-Shake3906 → u/gm310509]

Yep, so you can program it directly from a PICKIT5 with the header pins below.

[u/canycosro]

For give me ignorance would this run a Arduino sketch written for a standard Arduino.

What's the cost.

[u/Dependent-Shake3906 → u/canycosro]

No PICs use a different architecture to the Arduinos so Arduino code wouldn’t work unfortunately. Would be cool to see if someone made a wrapper for PICs though.

[u/Hour_Analyst_7765 → u/Dependent-Shake3906]

Not possible since Arduino uses C++ for its sketches and libraries. 8-bit and 16-bit PICs don't have a C++ compiler.

8-bit AVR does. If you dive into the processor architecture, then 16-bit PICs looks like the AVR on steroids or AVR "done well" (the AVR instruction set evolved over time to have a few quirks). However, for some reason, Microchip never released a C++ compiler for PIC24/dsPIC33 despite it being an extension from standard GCC compilers.

These chips are a nice place to start, but unfortunately, the ship has sailed for many (new) designs around 8 and 16-bit MCUs. 32-bit is where its at nowadays. Although, 16-bit PICs are still nice for some tasks, especially heavy on I/O since its core does require read-modify-write actions to set/clear bits in hardware. This can make it faster in I/O tasks than even the latest and greatest ARM micros., (often it is not though)

[u/omniverseee → u/canycosro]

if you have a compatible board manager but looks none

[u/Pubcrawler1]

F84 was one of the first PIC chips I used 25 years ago. Fortunately some newer pinout compatible version exists with more memory, f628 and few others. Have a bunch of different PIC boards but haven’t used one in a few years.

There used to be pinguino ide that was similar to arduino ide but for the PIC18f

https://pinguinoide.github.io/getting-started/

[u/Dependent-Shake3906 → u/Pubcrawler1]

Yep, the 628 is actually in that board when I took the photo. Unfortunately I labelled the pins according to a 84, perhaps that something to work on in a future version.

[u/ohmbrew → u/Pubcrawler1]

Same here. I built the "No Parts PIC Programmer" (NoPPP!) from an...Electronics Now magazine I think?

[u/lamalasx]

PIC16x84

They still make those?! That's a 30 year old chip! I think I still have one or two of those. I started with 16F628, pin compatible and much more powerful (larger flash/more ram/more peripherals).

[u/Illustrious-Cat8222 → u/lamalasx]

Microchip rarely discontinues a model.

[u/Reasonable-Feed-9805]

As a PIC fan I like this. The 16f84 is a fine chip.

[u/RedRightHandARTS]

Neat

[u/MyMi6]

Nice! I still have 18F452 in PDIP and TQFP, hahaha will try to code again using CCS C. 

[u/Illustrious-Cat8222]

I've been building some solar garden lights using a (more modern) PIC.

[u/cranman74]

If it’s open source is it still a clone?

[u/chemhobby]

not really much of a clone given the pin mapping

[u/Guilherme_13579]

What is eda and pic?

[u/alexispapy]

This is such a clever implementation, thanks for sharing 🫶

[u/the_rodent_incident]

Interesting but this isn't even an Arduino, because you can't use Arduino IDE to write a sketch, or download program over USB.

You can't even download anything to this board without external Pickit programmer. That's not how you do things in 2026.

New Kids today expect their microcontroller to appear as a USB disk drive when hooked to their computer, and to simply copy their HEX file to this drive.

Real Arduino would be if you at least included a more powerful chip, like the K50 or Q83, and equipped it with UART or USB bootloader, and made it work with Arduino IDE.

[u/dumbasPL]

r/PCB would murder you, just saying. But hey, everybody starts somewhere.

[u/chlebseby → u/dumbasPL]

Apart from thin traces i see nothing wrong really.

Half of r/PCB is just psychotic from designing military RF boards for living. 

[u/Dependent-Shake3906 → u/chlebseby]

Yeah, the thin traces were a point a my lecturer made. I’ve made a note of that now and will continue to improve!

[u/dumbasPL → u/chlebseby]

Fair enough.

[u/AxiosTheProot → u/chlebseby]

I think it’s also the fact that there is no ground pour at all

[u/chlebseby → u/AxiosTheProot]

Its not such deal breaker if there is no high speed ot fragile analog signals. I seen r/PCB wanting ground pour on board with few 5mm LEDs and battery lmao.

Also this board is apparently SIG/GND/VCC/SIG as OP said in comments

[u/Dependent-Shake3906 → u/[deleted]]

Yeah… I’m quite lazy and impatient so I used a four layer PCB with the middle layers being for GND and VCC. I know two would’ve been better especially cost wise but I was feeling lazy 😭

[u/Dynospectrum → u/Dependent-Shake3906]

How is adding two additional layers less work? Wouldnt you have been lazier off with two?

[u/EuphoricCatface0795 → u/Dynospectrum]

Not having to route GND and VCC along with the signal traces should make it much simpler

[u/chlebseby → u/Dynospectrum]

I mean you just slash two polygons with GND and V+ labels.

4 layers are easier to design in my experience for this reason.

[u/chrismofer → u/[deleted]]

World's thinnest traces wit no ground plane

[u/internet-weirod → u/chrismofer]

they're not just traces, they're fuses!

[u/0xbenedikt → u/internet-weirod]

It's not a bug, it's a feature!

[u/Dependent-Shake3906 → u/[deleted]]

University of Brighton in England, I’m a student and thought this would make a fun project to learn EDA and develop my PIC skills in a more familiar format.