Tiny Tiger?

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cmsch180

Joined Jun 26, 2008
12
On the back of another one of my 4" 4-digit 7-segment LED displays, there is a Tiny Tiger micro controller (PN ENN-1/4) it was used as a timer, but no longer works, i believe it may need to be reprogrammed, does anyone know anything about these?
 

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Thread Starter

cmsch180

Joined Jun 26, 2008
12
yea i've never heard of them either until now, i cant find anything on how to program them:(

the basic stamp can be used to control a clock right?
 

SgtWookie

Joined Jul 17, 2007
22,230
Sure, but Basic Stamps are mighty pricey too.

About 10 years ago, I bought a BS2e and a BS2sx along with a Board of Education; cost me around $170. Their prices have gone up since then.

About three weeks ago, I got a PICkit 1, a PICtail Daughter Board for Signal Analysis, and twenty PIC12F675 uC's. Delivered cost was under $92.

Yes, there is a bit more of a learning curve with the PIC uC's, because programming is done in assembly language and C. However, I received the shipment in the afternoon, and before the sun went down I'd managed to rewrite one of their demo programs, compile and upload the program to a couple of the uC's.

The PICkit 1 also comes with a snap-off protoboard that you assemble.

If you're going to write a clock for that LED though, you'd be much better off with a uC that has more I/O pins. - which means you'd need the PICKit 2 instead - or you can build your own programmer. There are plenty of designs for them on the Web.
 

scubasteve_911

Joined Dec 27, 2007
1,203
I am not a fan of using basic stamps and put together solutions, since they're usually a lot more expensive and have less performance than a more current microcontroller. I'm now using an ARM Cortex microcontroller and am very happy with the results.. The chip is about 8$ and it runs at 72MHz with a lot of flash and a good amount of ram. You don't want to tie yourself to a micro that costs you 50$ everytime you want to use it. The idea is to get good at programming it and run with it.. I learned the PSoC micro a few years back and have put it in pretty much everything that needed a quick and cheap micro, but now I am getting into more processor hungry stuff..

So, in summary, just get a popular, cheap, and available IC to learn and incorporate into all your future projects :)

Steve
 

Thread Starter

cmsch180

Joined Jun 26, 2008
12
ok thanks, one more question, whats the main difference between assembly language and c, as opposed to basic language?
 
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SgtWookie

Joined Jul 17, 2007
22,230
BASIC is a relatively easy to learn English-like programming language. It's also easy to write really bad code with.

C is harder to learn, because it is not nearly as "friendly" as BASIC is. You'll be using curly braces {} a lot. It can be difficult to track down errors if you're not careful how you use variables. Commenting sections of code becomes more important.

Assembler is more difficult than C to code in, and the functions are quite basic. However, well-written assembly language programs can be extremely fast and very compact. If you make a mistake, you can send the uC off into lala-land quicker than you can say "Dang!". Assembly language programs should have LOTS of comments to indicate what the code is intended to do, and should be made as the program is being coded. Otherwise, you will hate yourself six months down the road when you need to make a change somewhere.

BASIC is generally a very "portable" language, except for device-specific statements.

C is reasonably portable as well.

Assembler is very processor-dependent. Assembly code that you write for one uC may require a number of changes in order to work on a different uC from the same manufacturer, or a complete re-write for a different manufacturer's uC.

Basic Stamps are relatively slow. The BS2sx runs at 50khz, which is one of the faster uC's in the BS2 line.
In contrast, the PIC12F675's I'm playing with at the moment have a 4MHz internal clock. These only have six I/O pins, but you can get PICs with far more pins and even higher clock speeds.
Basic Stamps aren't bad - but they are relatively slow and very expensive.
 

govalle

Joined Oct 27, 2010
1
On the back of another one of my 4" 4-digit 7-segment LED displays, there is a Tiny Tiger micro controller (PN ENN-1/4) it was used as a timer, but no longer works, i believe it may need to be reprogrammed, does anyone know anything about these?
Hi, I know your post is a few years old, but I just joined :). I used to work for the company that makes those timer/clocks etc.

I might be able to help you. All the tiger processors are programmed with all the codes or software switches, a technician would then enable the codes necessary to make the processor do what the customer ordered, if he needed a clock then the modes for a clock were enabled, if he needed a timer, then those particular modes were enabled to make it a timer.

When you say it no longer worked what do you mean, is it dead? or is the display a littler dimmer than when it was when it worked.?

I loved those little processors they are pretty neat, but they are very expensive.

If you need help with it let me know. or you can also try calling the guys at BRG , every one there would bend over bacwards to help you.
 
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