Buy an Arduino board and start from there if you are a beginner. Cheap and tou will find heaps of examples and possibilities to build something that will be useful .And that is always good for motivation. Good luck.
Here is a very good way to start Its a Pic simulator which has a tutorial on how to begin I undertook this as part of my studies at university it was no end of help and you don’t have to buy an Arduino board There is also a nice tutorial on how to make your own programmer and various other bits and peaces explained on my website with lots of other information but before you start on this tutorial make sure that you have Java JDK7.1 upwards installed on your pc with relevant class paths set to your JDK installation then follow my instructions on my website and you will also be able to program Atmel in C which is by far the preferred hi level language or you could simply opt for assembler , in which case the IDE is free from Microchip In the meantime I’ve uploaded the whole simulator which was originally written by the US navy Its not totally bug free but it is never the less a very good starting point for anyone whishing to undertake studies in embedded systems
Tutorial can be found on this page for you with lots of other links to sights concerning embedded CPU’s
Hope this helps you Mark www.harrington.force9.co.uk
