Pic16f628a projects

[snoopdogg416]

Hey guys i was wondering what projects i could do using the pic16f628a. Ive already built a 3x3x3 led cube using be80be's schematic and hex file..ive also nuilt an 8 channel pwm led chaser from the picprojects website. So i was wondering if anyone could provide links to any websites that have any other projects that use this pic. I am fairly new to microcontrollers and i dont know how to write code or anything...i do have an obsession with leds, so any projects that use the pic and leds would be cool. Sceadwian suggested two hood ideas ont the led cube thread but i hope he can provide me a link to any websites.

 

[Diver300]

Start with reprogramming some of your projects to do other things.

Change the speed and pattern of the LED chaser would be a good start.

 

[Wp100]

I am fairly new to microcontrollers and i dont know how to write code or anything

You seem to be fine at building the hardware and burning in the code, so surely now is the time to start learning to create some program code.

Nigel has an execellent tutorial series for the 16F628 chip with the first lesson being how to flash a led and it goes on to cover many more interesting pic functions.

Think you will find a simple led flashing with your own code a lot more rewarding than borrowing code from elsewhere.

 

[Sceadwian]

The good ideas I suggested were basic PWM fading, and sine wave fading, standard PWM fading isn't that hard, sine wave fading is a little more complex because it requires a lookup table.

I second both Diver and WP100, examine the code you've already programmed. The first thing you'll want to do is print the instruction list for your particular PIC, tells you what each and every instruction does and what registers it effects. That's for ASM programming though C programming you'll want to brush up on C itself a bit then view others code to see the differences between normal C and micro controller C.

Nigel's tutorial are all good simple projects and can easily be taken apart to understand them. Start off with the simplest projects on Nigels site until you actually fully understand everythign that's going on with them. I use AVR's not PIC's but the same rules apply, and the first time I had to write my own code it took me over an hour to get a good solid blinking LED going, because of the DDR registeres on the AVR's, which are similar to the TRIS registers on the PIC, set them wrong and nothing happens =) Also for software LED blinking it takes a little bit to understand juts how fast this little beasties really are. A fast PIC or AVR is executing of 5-20 million instructions per second. Turning an LED on and off is easy. Turning it on slow enough for a human to see it requires a delay loop to waste a lot of time.

Sorry for the babble.

 

[snoopdogg416]

thanks for all the input guys...yeah i agree programming with my own code will be more rewarding for sure. No worries about the babble Sceadwian, it always good to have more info than less. I'll take a look at nigel's tutorials.