The Explore Ultra 8051 Kit comes with all the things required, not just for this experiment but for the entire series. The base board is fully open, no peripheral is directly connected to the MCU breakout board. You may connect any peripheral to any port/pin you wish. The kit is fully open source, you may use the schematics, the design files and all of the source code and build something cool on your own. And when you do that do not forget to share with us what you've done. We would be happy to see you building something cool.

0Ultra one.PNG

The story of the Ultra Kit does not end here, we have even made the code libraries for all major 8 bit microcontrollers modular. It means you can simple upgrade or even switch your project to a different microcontroller/architecture without changing your application code. The kit ships with all the additional stuff mentioned below to get you started; kickstart you're embedded development. What are you waiting for? 

Kit Contents: Explore ULTRA PIC Development Board with following Modules, ICs and Interfaces:

  1. USB Communication with CP2102
  2. Eight 5mm LEDs
  3. Eight Switches in DIP package
  4. LCD 16x2
  5. Four Seven Segment Displays
  6. ADC 0808 with 555 timer for sampling frequency
  7. POT for ADC
  8. Light Sensor(LDR).
  9. Temperature sensor(LM35).
  10. Two Relays for Switching AC devices.
  11. 4x4 Keypad.
  12. L293D Motor Driver for DC and Stepper Motors.
  13. DS1307 based Real Time Clock.
  14. AT2404 EEPROM.
  15. USB cable.
  16. Power Adapter
  17. Single wire female connectors.
  1. Supported Controllers
Controller Flashing Software External Programmer Comments
At89s52 XploreFlash/ProgIsp UsbAsp Programmer IC is cheap and easily available but needs external programmer
P89v519d2 Flash Magic Not required, uses on board USB NXP has stopped manufacturing the IC and only the stock items are being sold.
SST8951RD2 Easy ISP Not required, uses on board USB IC is good but the programming software is not stable, doesn't save the configuration, needs manual reset and many other problems.
w78e052d Nuvoton ISP Not required, uses on board USB IC is cheap and good GUI for flasing the code. FLashing hex file takes less time compared to all



Driver Installation

Software Setup

Complete Board Test

The board is shipped with test software loaded in the controller. Connect the board to the System, Open the Serial Terminal and reset the Controller. Follow the below procedure to test all the peripherals.

GPIO Test

Connect the LED's, Buzzer and Relays to any of the port pins and observe the Led Blink, Buzzer-Beep and Relay-Chattering . *Note:The Rx,Tx pins will not blink as they are controlled by CP2102(Usb2Serial). PIC GPIO Testing.png


LCD 8-bit Test

Below table shows the LCD 8-bit pin connection.

RS RW EN D0 D1 D2 D3 D4 D5 D6 D7
PB_0 PB_1 PB_2 PD_0 PD_1 PD_2 PD_3 PD_4 PD_5 PD_6 PD_7


PIC LCD 8-bit Test.png


LCD 4-bit Test

Below table shows the LCD 4-bit pin connection.

RS RW EN D0 D1 D2 D3 D4 D5 D6 D7
PB_0 PB_1 PB_2 P_NC P_NC P_NC P_NC PD_4 PD_5 PD_6 PD_7
  • P_NC: Pin Not Connected


PIC LCD 4-bit Test.png

Seven Segment Test

Below table shows the Seven Segment Connection.

Seg1 Seg2 Seg3 Seg4 a b c d e f g h
PB_0 PB_1 PB_2 PB_3 PD_0 PD_1 PD_2 PD_3 PD_4 PD_5 PD_6 PD_7


PIC SevenSegment.png

RTC Test

The DS1307 RTC module will be connected I2C(SCL-RC.3,SDA-RC.4) pins as shown in below image. PIC RTC Testing.png

EEprom Test

(A-Z) is wriiten to eeprom and then read it back. Same is transmitted on UART. PIC Eeprom Testing.png

Adc Test

Ultra Board has a Pot, LDR and a temperature sensor. ADC values from these sensors is read and transmtted on UART. Below table shows the sensor pin connection.

Sensor Adc Channel Port Pin
Temperature AN0 RA0
POT AN1 RA1
LDR AN2 RA2

PIC ADC Testing.png

Keypad Test

Below table shows the hex keypad Row-Col pin connection.

R1 R2 R3 R4 C1 C2 C3 C4
PD_0 PD_1 PD_2 PD_3 PD_4 PD_5 PD_6 PD_7

PIC Hex Keypad.png