Hello everyone.

I have looked online and i read a few articles on PIC's and microcontrollers and i am confused. I want to learn how to program them (i even set aside a laptop just for that purpose) and as i mentioned earlier, I do auto electronics, and many auto electronics installs is lighting, mostly with LED's. I have built chasers and stuff with a binary counter and a 74154 paired with a 74193 and some gates and stuff. my question is, how does a tiny little IC flash like, 50 indiviual LED's? and with different patterns? it's amazing to me, i wish i understood more.

can anyone offer me a good site or a PIC or microctroller to start with? also i have the ability to program with Visual Basic, is there a compilier for this? or is the programming for these devices it's own thing?

Thanks everyone

 

Hello,

Here is a link to a site with tutorials and tips on pics.
http://www.best-microcontroller-projects.com/index.html
There is also a site with some complete projects.
http://www.josepino.com/pic_projects/
On this site there is also a getting started.
http://www.josepino.com/?p=199

Greetings,
Bertus

 

We use EasyPic from Mikroe.com :http://www.mikroe.com/en/tools/easypic5/

You can download the programming software for free from the site. In the downloaded software there are sample programs to show how the sequential programming is done. We use MikroBasic which is probably different from
Visual Basic. There is also a free online book for help in programming.As I have stated in other posts, I'm not claiming this is the best, but we like it.

 

wow, thanks gerty,

that is quite impressive for $130, that board has all kinds of goodies on it. that would be perfect...but im curious, what else is out there? is there a better IC for Driving strings and sets of LED's?

I think i might pick one of those sets up just to get started...

 

Look up "Charlieplexing" on Google. It's a little tricky to implement, but once you get a handle on it, you can control an amazing number of LEDs: n*(n-1)

The catch is that only one LED at a time is lit.

However, with just 8 output pins, you can control up to 56 (8*7=56) LEDs.

I have a PIC12F675 sitting here in a PICkit 1 programmer, that's flashing 12 LEDs in random patterns using just 4 I/O pins.

 

i looked at a few, i dont quite understand the concept, it looks like a circuit used opto-isolators with transistor drivers to switch 2 different voltages, but idk, i still dont get it.

I am very much interested still.

 

OK, start reading about Charlieplexing here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlieplexing
Then try here:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Charlieplexing-LEDs--The-theory/

Lots of Charlieplexing projects on instructibles.com

 

im looking now, thank you so much. i have pondered on this for a while now, and it's nice to finally find some answers lol

 

Hi,

Have a look at JAL - Everything is free and programmers are simple and very cheap to make. Start off with a 16F877 or similar PIC. Plenty of help in the Jallist forum.

 

Sorry - forgot the link!
http://www.casadeyork.com/jalv2/

 

I have to say the Atmel Atmega168 on any of the platforms (Arudiuno, Freeduino, Maxserial, Protoduino, Stickduino) have to be the easiest, most straight forward systems I have ever seen.
This meets many criteria's.

1. Price - for $40 bucks total you have everything you need.
2. Programming - simple to program - none of this difficult code.
3. Projects - many projects out there and many people sharing ideas on it.

Read this - its simple and interesting.

http://www.ladyada.net/learn/arduino/lesson0.html

Projects.
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/arduino/

Good luck with your decision.

http://www.arduino.cc/