request advise on Visual Antenna Direction Project

Thread Starter

PA3EFR

Joined Feb 16, 2007
1
Hello,

I am working on an idea of visualizing an antenna direction from my antenna on my roof on a map in the house. From the rotor clock I take the analogue signal, feed it into an ADC, thus producing a digital code, which in turn illuminates 1 of 36 bright LEDs. These LED's are each glued to a bunch of fiber optic cables. Every bunch is mounted in a line under a map. Evey line stars in the middle of the map where my home location is.
So, if my antenna points to 240 degrees, the LED 24 will light up and the fiber-line 24 will illuminate.
Where am I now and what do I need from you as reader? The idea is still in my head, allthough the fiber optic christmas tree is waiting to be dismantelled. I figure that I will need a ADC circuit to convert the analogue rotor clock signal into digital signals and to a encoder to get the 36 different LEDs to function. My question: would it be wise to have seperate chips to do these functions or is it better to get a PIC with ADC on-board to programm it the way I like?
My PIC-experience is close to zero, but hey, I can always learn.

Thanks in advance for any reponse.

Erwin,
 

hgmjr

Joined Jan 28, 2005
9,027
My vote is for the use of a microcontroller. Either a PIC or an AVR.

You could use it to count the digital pulses from the direction controller and use several of the digital IO lines to drive a decoder that would take in 6 lines and decode down to one of 36 lines for representing each of the 36 LEDs.

hgmjr
 
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