Switching from the Arduino programming environment to programming PIC's in C is a significantly steeper learning curve than I initially expected - I had just started learning to program AVR's using C but his project has taken that to a different level.

I'm not complaining, just revealing my inexperience with using more standard C, as opposed to the Arduino IDE programming language (which is derived from C).

While there seem to be some easier to learn development environments with compilers that have a greater set of included functions/libraries to support peripherals components (like the Arduino environment does) I've decided to stay with the MPLAB X IDE that is free from Microchip.

This means I'm sticking with XC8 for my compiler and I'm doing this for a number of reasons:

1. It's free, so open for everyone to use (making it easier to adapt/change the source code)
2. The base code I'm adapting is written using XC8 as the compiler
3. Last but not least – I've put in a significant amount of time learning to use it (I've only scratched the surface but starting over with something else would involve to much time at this point)

In the next day or 2 I'll post details of my adventure with porting code to allow me to use the Nokia 5110 lcd with PIC's. (I decided to switch to the Nokia 5110 LCD because it is widely available, cheap and much more compact than standard 16x2 LCD, like the HD44780 varieties).