So after MANY issues with the PicKit 3, I finally managed to program the PIC32. I think this will be my last project with the PIC - the ARM world looks so much nicer!

Seriously I don't understand how Microchip could have gotten the PicKit 3 so wrong - it has less functionality than the PicKit 2, and doesn't even work half the time. If you do a quick google search you'll find a lot of people complaining about it in general, so it's not just a bad PicKit!

Anyway enough of the rant, here's a photo of my prototype version with the bare minimum soldered in:

Unfortunately I've run into more problems: The PIC32MX210F016B doesn't have enough flash :(

There's not even enough flash to fit in a USB bootloader like I was originally intending to, and there's only just enough room for the USB communications library and some basic PWM control. There's definitely not enough room to be able to do any kind of audio processing (which I want in order to make it sound reactive) Looks like I under-estimated how much space PIC32 code would use.

So it looks like the next step is to order in some bigger chips, which luckily will be pin-compatible. At least it works with my C# GUI though!