TQFP PIC18F4550 Custom ICSP Board

PIC18F4550 TQFP Custom ICSP board

The Sole purpose of this circuit is to code and test the formerly build PIC18F4550 TQFP board.

I could have included an ICSP port on the formerly built Microcontroller board itself rather than making a separate ICSP board, but somehow it didn’t seem to me a very good idea to mess things up on the first very attempt to close the TQFP deal. Believe me, separate board made things less painful to debug when space between the pins were so less.

Hence I decided to isolate things to a different ICSP adapter board, which shall make things little less complicated, easy to debug and good probability of experimenting and testing without hurting the QFP microcontroller Board.

The microcontroller board bears Male Pins. So all the upcoming related board should have female Ports in the right alignment to that of the UC board, so it should fit right in.  There may be more than one way to make sure the alignment is correct, but for me the easiest way was to edit the previous Eagle project and build the next board around it without disturbing the pin alignment.

TQFP PIC18F4550 ICSP Custom board

First step was to open the Layout designer and print on heat transfer paper.

PIC18F4550 TQFP Custom ICSP Circuit PCB layout design

PIC18F4550 TQFP Custom ICSP Circuit Printing on paper

TQFP PIC18F4550 ICSP Custom board printing on Circuit

TQFP PIC18F4550 ICSP Custom Circuit Etching process

TQFP PIC18F4550 ICSP Custom Circuit Etching chemical dip

PIC18F4550 TQFP Custom ICSP Copper board Print

TQFP PIC18F4550 ICSP Custom board Ready and working

PIC18F4550 TQFP Custom ICSP Circuit design and logic

After all the soldering and connections, the formerly build Microcontroller board sat right into the ICSP board as expected. After a month of wait (Order and delivery) and few hours of etching followed by careful soldering, the effort paid off my when Pickit2 detected the PIC18F4550 on the very first attempt.

The ICSP board worked the way it’s supposed to be and the pins were tested on the Microcontroller board to perform some basic ADC, Input and Output operations which turned out to be successful. Now finally it’s time make some good use of the TQFP board.

It was time to place order for some SMD components for my upcoming boards, regular sized components were just using up unwanted space. So this led me to work on my next project.

PIC18F4550 TQFP BOT

TQFP PIC18F4550 ICSP Custom board

Thanks for Reading
Ron