Chipkit compatibility with Arduino

Question

I am looking at the Digilent Chipkit boards. What compatibility issues have any of you run across? There are too many weasel words in the descriptions...

• Compatible with many existing Arduino™ code examples, reference materials and other resources.
• Pin-out compatibility with many existing Arduino™ shields that can operate at 3.3V

Anyone familiar with any issues using regular Arduino code on these boards (via the custom programmer/UI, of course)?

I like that there are more I/O pins and features exposed. And though I do not need it today, the idea of increased performance could become important down the road as well.

Also, FWIW, it looks like Digilant's custom shields are NOT compatible with standard Arduino boards, as they appear to use these extended I/O capabilities.

Answer 1

It will work well with most basic sketches and examples you will find on the internet that do not do too many AVR specific things. The arduino environment is effective at hiding the details of the actual processor from you, but it does not mandate that separation. You are still welcome to import the chip-specific header files and directly change specific registers, access pins directly, and interact with the chip on a much lower level. Any code that uses the avr specific headers will not port cleanly to a pic system without modifications.