This article describes an expansion board kit available from NKC Electronics for the chipKIT Uno32 Development Board.

What is a Proto Shield? We all know that the Shields are from the Arduino world and they are named after the little boards that sits on top of the Arduino and compatible boards. A Proto Shield is a combination of a ProtoBoard with a Shield. You usually use a Bread Board to build a prototype, to test the design. Once you have it working and want to house it in a more permanent board, is where a Proto Shield shows its benefits.

The ProtoShield for the chipKIT Uno32 is an exclusive design of NKC

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