Chapter 1
Introduction

PICSimLab means Programmable IC Simulator Laboratory

PICSimLab is a realtime emulator of development boards with integrated MPLABX/avr-gdb debugger. PICSimLab supports microcontrollers of picsim , simavr, uCsim, gpsim, qemu-stm32 and qemu-esp32 simulators. PICSimLab have integration with MPLABX/Arduino IDE for programming the boards microcontrollers. As the purpose of PICSimLab is to emulate real hardware it does not have any source code editing support. For code editing and debugging the same tools used for a real board should be used with PICSimLab, such as MPLABX, Arduino IDE or VSCode with PlatformIO. Using the PICSimLab Code Project Wizard, you can quickly create pre-configured code templates for both writing and debugging a wide range of boards. For boards based on the PIC16F and PIC18F microcontrollers, the wizard generates projects that utilize MPLAB X. For boards based on AVR, STM32, and ESP32, the wizard generates projects that utilize VSCode+PlatformIO

PICSimLab supports several devices (spare parts) that can be connected to the boards for simulation. As for example LEDs and push buttons for simple outputs and inputs and some more complex ones like the ethernet shield w5500 for internet connection or the color graphic display ili9340 with touchscreen. The the complete list of parts can be accessed in the chapter Spare Parts.