pics in commercial products

[Gaston]

what commercial products are pics used in?

 

[Sceadwian]

The list is too long to even bother thinking about. They could literally be in anything that has electricity going through it.

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

Yes, I come across them in all sorts of devices - I've seen some with three or four PIC's fitted.

 

[House0Fwax]

As an example, I recently took apart one of thoes automatic air freshener items.
There inside was a can of air freshener, motor/gearbox ( to press down on the can ), 4 x AA batteries and a small pcb with a pic controlling the timing and reset of the whole deal. Oh, and a LED of course.

 

[agent420]

You have to realize that as hobbiests, we are simply enjoying these devices because they are so prevalent in consumer products the sheer number allow them to be available and affordable. Things like pics and avrs are not manufactured with the hobby community in mind, they are first and foremost raw building blocks targeted towards oems. Some companies are more hobby friendly in terms of support than others, probably because the success of their products provides enough financial resources to do so, and it's good pr.

 

[William At MyBlueRoom]

DCC model train controllers have PICs, So does my Chrysler car remote.

 

[Gaston]

wow i didn't realise that it was meant for commercial products. with so much support i thought it was aimed at hobbyist

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

wow i didn't realise that it was meant for commercial products. with so much support i thought it was aimed at hobbyist

The huge support arose because people realised what useful devices they are - with the advent of the 16C84, the first EEPROM based PIC, it became easy and cheap to use them. David Tait (the father of PIC programmers) came up with a simple parallel port design, along with BASIC software to run it. This spawned huge numbers of similar programmers, and most are based on the principles he used on his first one - although he would be the first to agree that he's NOT a hardware designer, and the first version used the rather poor method of CMOS switches to switch Vdd and Vpp.

It was the 16C84 that got me involved in PIC's, and led to the development of WinPicProg - based on David's original work. Back then all programmers (and tools) ran under DOS, as Windows either wasn't about yet, or wasn't good enough to consider. The first Windows version of WinPicProg (the worlds first Windows PIC programmer) ran under Windows 3, as it predated Win 95.

So I've been involved with PIC's for a LONG time, and I wasn't the first by a long way!.

 

[atferrari]

The system opening/closing doors in the S'pore' metro cars.

Low end instruments.

Simple alarm displays.

 

[hjames]

Bah, old is back when development used 16C54/JW's in windowed packages. Production runs used One-Time-Programmable EPROMS. Even then I remember seeing something floating around inside old Alpha DEC mice (the ones with 2 wheels and no ball).

There's two in the GPS/IRIG timing generator sitting on my desk, and I think I've seen some of them floating around in some random computer peripherals.

 

[donniedj]

Gaston: Products that use wire?
PIC is made my Microchip. General Instruments sold out cause they thought microcontrollers would not see the light (fools). Microchip is one of the first microcontroller successfully mass produced. Microchip till this day is in the top 3 microcontroller world dominators list.

Answer me what commercial products wire has been used in. If you ever finish and if I am still alive, I would then answer your original question with glee.

 

[dknguyen]

Who are the other two companies? Is one of them Freescale? TI? or think smaller?

 

[GRC]

Paint-Ball-Guns/Markers use PICs. I was very impressed when I went to change the battery in my son's gun/marker. There right in front of us a
14 pin PIC.

 

[Sceadwian]

I'm surprise they use something as 'sophisticated' as a PIC for a paintball gun, the number of fireing modes and rate could easily be set using a few simple gates.

 

[dknguyen]

"Microprocessor-controlled!" is better marketing than "quad-transistor controlled!"

 

[GRC]

When you think about it, which is least expensive, 1 PIC or sevreal TTL logic
chips. I'm not really 100% sure, but I'm leaning toward the PIC side as the
cheaper way.

To tell the truth I was a bit surpised to find something as advanced as a PIC
in this device too.

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

I'm surprise they use something as 'sophisticated' as a PIC for a paintball gun, the number of fireing modes and rate could easily be set using a few simple gates.

It gives far more versatility, and it can be made a LOT smaller and lighter. We moved telecomms provider at work a number of years ago, and to get cheaper calls you had to dial a number of different prefixs to use various 'routes', whichever was the cheapest. Obviously this would be difficult to remember, and they provided little white boxes that the phones plugged into before the socket. The boxes downloaded and stored data based on the cheapest call route, and the boxes automaticaly inserted the correct prefix for you.

These aren't used any more (we use yet another provider!), so I took one to pieces to have a look - they were stuffed full of SM components, including three or four PIC's. Also, I've recently seen a PIC in digital satellite receivers, I 'think' it was used to control the conditional access card interface.

 

[Hero999]

What about programable logic devices?

I was under the impression that they are often more ocmmon than PICs in commercial products.

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

What about programable logic devices?

I was under the impression that they are often more ocmmon than PICs in commercial products.

Wouldn't have thought so?.

 

[Hero999]

It's just an observation I've made looking at PC mother boards, sound and graphics cards etc.