Trying out PIC18F-Any recommended chips?

[djsb]

I'm considering trying out the PIC18F series. Are there any recommendations from this forum regarding favourite chips (preferably with USB support and plenty of memory and I/O. MUST have i2c)? I'd want to try out chips that have a future and are not end of life if possible (Q series?). I will also have to buy a PCH licence, of course. Thanks.

[temtronic]

My 'goto' chip for years has been the PIC18F46K22, though very few available. Microchip do suggest 2 'alternates', ..Q10 ? that has a lot more bells and whistles ,like 5 UARTS ! 8 CLC !!

I'd need to upgrade my compiler to play with them and I still have 2 years supply of 46K22 stashed away here.

It'd be nice to here from those who have used the newer PICs, as I've never had a problem with the 46K22.

[Ttelmah]

Th 47Q10, is a very nice chip, but with some 'caveats'. Big one for many
applications is that the internal oscillator does not meet it's original specs.
This may make it unreliable for serial comms, unless you use a crystal.
Has automotive certification, which for some applications may be useful.

However I'd look at the 47Q83. Have used this on a couple of projects,
and it is a really well featured chip. Only errata is on the UTMR, and only
with specific combinations of prescaler etc.. So normally easy to avoid.
Has a fabulous range of peripherals, EEPROM, lots or RAM and ROM. It's
internal oscillator is one of the best I've met. Like most of the PIC18's
it's PPS is not universal, but with the number of peripherals, you should
be able to find a combination that gives what you need on the pins you
want. Has really good DMA, the waveform generator, and supports a wide
supply range. As a chip with pretty much everything, this is hard to beat!...

As a comment to this though, be aware of the limitations of the newer
chips:
First, I have yet to see any PIC actually become 'non available' because
of age. You can still get the 16C84!. It is getting hard, but does show how
popular chips will keep being available.
Then the older chips are much more rugged than their newer brethren.
The internal transistor sizes shrink as the chips get more complex, making
them more prone to bad effects from electrical interference and noise.
You can 'throw' a circuit together with something like a 16F677, and it'll
merrily run on a breadboard with a poor supply. Try the same thing with
one of the newer PIC's and you find yourself having to add proper
decoupling and input protection to make the unit reliable.
So just a 'caveat' here.