On my way through the I2C problems I downloaded the PIC32 Family Reference Manual from Microchip. I was looking things up and it wasn’t so bad due to it being broken into different sections. There was one section on I2C so I mainly focused on it. I then started figuring out that perhaps it would be nice to search around for things across the whole manual. At that point I discovered that you cannot join each chapter/section together to form a big master PDF file.
I then started considering actually just printing it out instead but realized it was kind of big. I then decided I wanted it to be bound together and began looking at Staples to have them just do the whole binding thing into a single book with a stiff cover on it. I started uploading files one at a time (because they don’t have a bulk upload function)… and then discovered that they don’t have all the chapters/sections written yet. There is probably like 4-5 sections that simply don’t exist. You have no idea what they talk about because there is no master index yet. Reading through the manual there are sections that have been revised in 2007, 2008, 2009, etc. They’ve been working on writing the manual for almost 4 years now and STILL are not done yet.
I decided if it wasn’t complete I wasn’t going to take it to Staples and have them bind it together. Instead I’ve now been printing it out for the past few days on my laser printer and binding it using those plastic coils. I’ve now made it to section 20 printing duplex pages. I think there’s about 10 more sections to go. It’s getting pretty close to a ream of paper it looks like. I’m going to do the 5/6/7xx family data sheet too I think since I reference that a lot. That’s another 230+ pages (130ish double sided… not sure the exact number of pages it is off the top of my head)
I’m also considering getting the pin out graphic (or making my own) and colorizing it and having it blown up to print on a wide 30-40 some inch color plotter. It’s really difficult to program all these things without looking up which pins are being used on the starter kit. It’s FURTHER complicated not knowing how the starter kit hooks to the header pins and the various accessories. There also seems to be several pins that probably do not connect at all making things even more fun!
I’m “taking a break” from coding for the moment. I’m trying to use SPI to get it talking to one of the temperature sensors. I’ve got it initializing the SPI area and it SEEMS to be talking to the sensor. I had worked on another sensor earlier and it downloaded calibration data from the eeprom but none of it seems to mathematically make sense. Everything seems to be off pretty significantly. The only thing I can think of is I’m off a few decimals or something somewhere in the process. I think I really need to start printing out more sensor data sheets and start comparing them side by side with the manuals for the PIC32. There is something wrong with the reading process where it seems to hang sometimes and not others. The eeprom read comes back with the same numbers each time when I randomly bounce around in any order so it SEEMS to work but I can’t really get anything usable out of it yet.
I also discovered another problem at the end of last month. Apparently on the 30th and 31st of the month the real time clock doesnt show the right date. I can set it into the clock chip and back out. When it goes into the PIC32’s clock it converts it back to a 1. It is my guess now that there is some sort of Decimal / Binary / BCD / Hex conversion problems.