Mini PIC Dev Board

           For one reason or another I really like to use breadboards for building prototype designs. The breadboard offers superior flexibility in that you can change a single electrical connection at any time, as long as you have a long enough wire. One of the draw backs of the breadboard is that you tend to build the same circuits over and over again.
           Since I like to use the PIC microcontroller in my projects I figured it would be nice to make a mini development board that could fit onto a breadboard and already had a power circuit and programming circuit connected. This way I won't have to rebuild the same power + programming circuit every time I start a new project. This article describes my design process so that you can build one too!

Mini PIC Dev Board - Demonstration

Mini PIC Dev Board - Setup

Purpose & Overview of this project
           The goal of this project is to build a development board for any of the PIC 18F 40 pin series so that it can be powered up, programmed and used while also connected to a bread board. Since I plan to use the development board connected to a breadboard the PCB layout needs to be as compact as possible.
           I will design this board around the PIC 18F452 microcontroller, the LM7805 +5v regulator to provide power and a standard 6 pin header to connect any ICSP connector to the board and program the PIC. A standard power jack should be used so a normal "wall-wart" transformer can be used to power this dev board.