rezurrekta said:
Our professor has allowed us to pay a programmer if we can find one to program our PIC
:shock: Are you sure about that? Isn't the point of the project to, ahem, actually make your project?
Back when I was a first year student at my university I was reading through some of the senior design projects on display, and in the list of funds, there was a listing for PIC programmer for like $300. My first impression was that they actually hired someone to crank out some code for the PIC, and they paid the dude $300. Then I got into the microproc lab and discovered that the device, the little piece of hardware, was referred to as a PIC programmer. That is what was on the list of materials.
Are you sure your prof didn't say something like "Yes you can pay for a PIC programmer" and you translated it to "Yes you can hire a codemonkey" ? Perhaps a trip to his/her office for clarification would be a good idea.