I'd like to be able to use salvaged crystals, but I don't own a frequency counter, or a ocilloscope, because most of my projects are robotic, and usually when I work with crystalls, I'm just plugging one in to make a usb device or a transmitter work, I don't get into detail with them.
So brainstorm with me if you will, how plausible would it be to make a PIC18 based crystal frequency tester? and what pitfalls would it encounter? And by the way, if there is a project writeup for a similar idea already out there, please direct me to it.
I'm looking for input on how this might best be accomplished, but heres what I'm thinking of: It seems like it could be as simple as setting one chip to work on a crystal with an open socket for the crystal itself, and either another part of that chip or a separate chip could run on a crystal that allows a 1 second clock, 38 point something MHZ i think it is. The first clock could count, and the second could request that count every second. Take an average every few seconds, and display the frequency by any of a number of means, even a simple led binary readout would be fine for my purposes. I know that pics are limited in how high of a frequency they can run, but I figure that issue may be solved by the fact that I primarily care about crystalls that they can use since I'm using these crystals for PIC chip projects.