Hi all! After a really busy months, I come back with a small tip. I start again work with PICs some years ago, and since then, I usually use the Pickit 3 programmer from Microchip. It’s a really great tool, with official support, online updates, and I never have a problem with it. But a couple of years ago, I discover the Mikroe products, both compiler for PIC and the programmer they have to program more tan 1000 PIC microcontrollers,  the Mikroprog programmer

Mikroprog is bigger in size than Pickit3, and comes with a flat 10-pin wire assemble inside the box, so you can’t remove this wire. Pickit 3 has 6-pin female connector just to plug it on the board header for programming.

Both devices has the same USB connector for PC management: USB mini:

The problem with this two programmers is the programming connector. As you can see in the following image, both programmers has different connectors and pinout for programming:

The pinout of the programmers are shown on the next image: on the left side, Pickit 3 pinout and on the right side, Mikroprog pinout:

You can find more technical info about these programers here and here.

So, to use old boards thas has Pickit 3 header with Mikroprog programmer, you definitively need an adapter to have the signals on the same order. Is really simple to implement, just need to cross the signals. Here’s the schematic of the adapter:

With the connectors and a small piece of prototype board, it just take 10 mins to make it one:

So, with this simple adapter you can use both programmers on boards that have a Pickit3 programming header.

This post is also available in: Spanish