[.uk] PIC Microcontroller Project Book : For PIC Basic and PIC ... (ISBN 0071437045)

Outdated and provides little useful information:
I'm afraid I need to disagree with the professor's review. If you are at all interested in the PIC microcontrollers and use of PIC Basic you would be best served looking elsewhere for inspiration. John Iovine's book is poorly written in so many ways that even someone new to microcontrollers would find very little use for it. Aside from his writing style being somewhat confusing, this book is full of outdated information. With a publishing date of 2004 I was suprised to find so much information applied to applications and hardware from the 90's inside. Aside from this, which in and of itself is reason enough not to waste your time or money on it, he doesn't list any resources in his text. For example, he makes mention of serial LCD's, but doesn't provide any specific examples of vendors or models and makes claim that they all work the same, which is not true. His projects are the same basic beginners projects you can find all over the internet for free and are less descriptive than those you might find elsewhere. There isn't a single PCB design in the book and he demonstrates all of his projects with a breadboard. Most unfortunate, is the pictures he provides of the finished breadboards - they are taken at an angle, far enough away from the breadboard that not only could you not use the picture to validate your own breadboard design, you can barely tell what is what on the breadboard at all. On top of everything else, he explores only the PIC16F84 chip, which while one of the more popular chipsets ever produced by Microchip, is also outdated information since Microchip has since updated this to the PIC16F84A model and he doesn't cover any other chipset in any detail. One or two of his projects and examples show a different chipset in the schematic, but that's about it. His exploration of the BASIC language is no more or less descriptive than, say, the users guide of the PIC Basic language itself (which you can get for free). There are also many omissions and errors throughout the book, specifically as they apply to his projects. For example, his H-Bridge DC motor controller design is not smokeless (you could easily fry the PIC and/or other components in this design) and is missing several key components (like capacitors) that would prevent the design from working in a real world application. He also has a half a dozen or so shameless plugs throughout the book pointing you to 'other books he has written' to get more information - if this book is any example of what you might find in his other books, you'd be best to stay away from this author altogether. The cover of this book claims it is 'Completley updated and revised' - I guess this means the first edition was really horrible, the second edition is, in my opinion, simply not worth the read.

Good starter book for those interested in PICs:
I bought the original edition of this book about 5 years ago, and it was instrumental in getting me started in PIC microcontroller programming and implementation. Although there are some errors throughout the book (someone commented that there are also errors in the new edition), and the hardware referenced is fairly dated (SPO256, for example, and some would argue the outdatedness of the PIC16F84), it's still a valuable source of information and reference. Browsing through the second edition, I see he's added PIC Basic "Pro" material, and filled out the chapters with more material specific to the chapter. The original edition was a good "hand holding" introductory tour through the use and function of a basic PIC microcontroller, and although I don't own the second edition yet, it looks to be more of the same, with a repeat of most of the original material.

Excellent place to start with microcontrollers:
This is a great book for learning a "beginner's basics" in microcollers. I give it four stars because of the misleading cover images of robots. There is nothing in the book about making a complete robot, but there are good basic microcontroller applications that could be used in a robot. In other words, there are PIC Basic programs where the reader can see real world applications while learning how to program and set up circuits.

OK great book!!! But???:
This book is ok if want to build the robots explained in the book or useit to expand your knowledge. The reason I like this book is because he use's both the PICBASIC and PICBASIC PRO to program the robots. But it has too many errors and some of the projects are not fun enough to excite robot hobbyist at all. I wish he make another book which has more projects. Still the book is great!!!

Excellent starting point:
When I bought the previous edition of this book, I couldn't put it down. I had no idea how easy PIC BASIC was, and that you can get PIC chips for free! Every project works and there is a thorough explanation in plain english as to how it works. The projects covered in this book are really very cool and I highly recommend it to anyone just getting into this field.