User manual

Explorer 8 Development Board User’s Guide
DS40001812A-page 22  2015 Microchip Technology Inc.
In meeting these requirements, the following items are to be taken into consideration:
• Code development and debugging – The free MPLAB X IDE software
development tool includes a debugger and several other software tools as well as
a unified graphical user interface (GUI) for working with other Microchip and
third-party software and hardware tools.
• Assembler – The free MPLAB X IDE tool includes the MPASM™ assembler.
• Compiler – Microchip’s MPLAB
®
XC8 Compiler is fully integrated for the MPLAB
X IDE environment.
• Programmer – Microchip’s MPLAB In-Circuit Debugger (ICD) 3, PICkit 3 In-Circuit
Debugger/Programmer, or MPLAB REAL ICE In-Circuit Emulator can be used to
program the device and all are fully integrated for the MPLAB X IDE environment.
• The MPLAB
Code Configurator (MCC) – is Microchip’s new tool for developing
drivers and initializers featuring a very easy to use GUI. It is a free tool that inte-
grates into MPLAB X, providing a very powerful development platform. For more
information on MCC go to (www.microchip.com/mcc)
.
The MPLAB X IDE and the XC8 Compiler can be downloaded from the Microchip web
site.
For a list of tools compatible with PIC microcontrollers, see the Microchip Development
Tools web site at www.microchip.com/devtools.
2.3.2 Opening the Program in MPLAB
®
X IDE
The MPLAB X Integrated Development Environment (IDE) is a software program that
runs on Windows
®
, MAC OS
®
and Linux
®
to develop code for PIC microcontrollers and
Digital Signal Controllers (DSC).
This section describes how to open the
Explorer_8_Demo_MCC.X project in MPLAB
X IDE.
1. Download the
Explorer_8_Demo_MCC project from Microchip’s Explorer 8 web
page (www.microchip.com/explorer8).
2. Launch the MPLAB X IDE application and select
File>Open Project>
Explorer_8_Demo_MCC.X >Open Project from the downloaded section. The
project file will appear on the
Projects area. If it is not the main project, set as
main project.
3. Right click.
Explorer_8_Demo_MCC.X >Set as main project.
4. If not already downloaded, download and install the MCC tool from the Plugins
repository. This is done by the following:
• Select Tools from the MPLAB X menu, then Plugins.
• Select the
Available Plugins tab and select the MPLAB Code Configurator
• Go through the install process.
5. Once installed, go to the Tools menu in MPLAB X, select Embedded then MPLAB
Code Configurator.
6. With MCC open, all the modules currently in the project used for the demo
application can be seen.
7. The device is now ready to be built and programmed.
The next section will describe how to load the program into the microcontroller.