Update on Trundle - I’ve been buying everyone else’s Christmas presents for me - a couple of VTX-40 motor controllers, a joystick, a Microchip Explorer 16 evaluation kits and a couple of books on Microcontroller development.

In another life I did a fair bit of PIC programming - on 8 bit devices - but I have to admit I’ve probably forgotten most of it, I worked in assembler, and I know little about the 16 bit RISC architecture let alone programming it in C.

So I do what I normally do when I’m breaking new territory - buy a good book or two.

I’ll own up now that I’ve only read the back cover, the introduction and the first chapter (the obligatory hello world!) but I can already tell I’m going to like it - it’s speaking my language.

Lucio is a private pilot, and the book’s subtitle relates to the way he describes the process of developing in aviation terms; and I think it works well - flight plan, preflight checklist, the flight, post flight briefing and references.

The topics cover are mostly directly relevant to me too - from initial familiarisation with the various environments, references and techniques, through key topics such as I/O, interrupts, A/D, Async comms and for good measure using the onboard LCD display.

Yes it’s going to be a real drag stopping myself from jumping into the fun of later topics, but I know from previous experience that time spent in fundamentals pay dividends down the line.