Hippogriff
Member
I know as well as anyone that it is considered best practice to have a resistor coupled with an LED so that it doesn't die on you. However, when doing simple debugging things on my breadboard I have never used a resistor when using an LED with my PIC projects, when that LED is connected directly to a PIC's output pin. I have also not - yet - had one blow on me.
I was reading through some PIC datasheets and I noticed that some (not all) have this thing called "direct LED drive (the 12F683 does, but not the 16F1825) and that sounded cool.
Is that what allows me to get away with this? I've driven LEDs directly from PIC pins on PICs that don't list this feature in their datasheet, i.e. 16F676 and 16F684, and have not - yet - fallen foul of dying LEDs, but maybe I've just got lucky.
Also, maybe it's down to the LEDs I've been using, usually I pick up a blue one, but I have orange and red and green.
Maybe "direct LED drive" is something that is inbuilt to all PICs these days and they just don't mention it in the datasheet?
I was reading through some PIC datasheets and I noticed that some (not all) have this thing called "direct LED drive (the 12F683 does, but not the 16F1825) and that sounded cool.
Is that what allows me to get away with this? I've driven LEDs directly from PIC pins on PICs that don't list this feature in their datasheet, i.e. 16F676 and 16F684, and have not - yet - fallen foul of dying LEDs, but maybe I've just got lucky.
Also, maybe it's down to the LEDs I've been using, usually I pick up a blue one, but I have orange and red and green.
Maybe "direct LED drive" is something that is inbuilt to all PICs these days and they just don't mention it in the datasheet?