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One day while doing some research on something or another on the Web, I came across a link explaining how to connect a MicroChip PIC to a Nokia Cell Phone LCD Screen. Sounded cool; I had been playing with PIC’s and PicAxe’s anyway and thought it was knowledge that would be useful someday. Then I found a Nokia 5165 Cell Phone at an Electronics Flea Market (http://www.FrostFest.com) for $1.00, and at that price, I couldn’t pass it up! I knew I could hook the LCD up, but wasn’t exactly sure what I was going to do with it, when one day it struck me… PIC’s have an Analog Input (ADC) – I could make a very simple, little Oscilloscope! A “Minimalist Oscilloscope” – and thus The Minimalist Oscilloscope 08M Project was born.
The Minimalist Oscilloscope 08M Project - [Link]
Interfacing an Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC) with Linux via the parallel port is fairly simple. There two major areas that need to be addressed – hardware and software. The hardware consists of the parallel port, an ADC, and an analog signal source. The software programmed in ‘C’ language. [via]
Interfacing Your Computer to an ADC via the Parallel Port - [Link]
This robot control by PIC16F818 which has a lot of features that work well in this situation. As you can see from the Schematic and Source Listing, position pulses for the 2 servos are generated dirctly from the PIC. Also, the room light level, battery condition, and servo power draw (indicating mechanical loading) can be measured with the internal ADC. [via]
Beam Robot - [Link]
This simple four channel temperature meter can be connected directly to your computer COM port and doesn’t require additional power supply. Check you computer back if there are any com ports before you start.
Temperature meter is based on ATtiny15L microcontroller which has built in ADC. Power for this circuit is taken from com port ER and RS signal lines. High level of these lines is from 6 to 12V and can supply up to 5mA of current. As L series microcontrollers are low power this is more than enough.
As temperature sensors there are four 103AT thermisters used. They give pretty good precision at room temperature (~0.3Cº). Author provides firmware for ATtiny15L and VBA project that logs temperature data to excel file. [via]
COM port powered temperature meter - [Link]
This project is a simple 12-bit, 8-channel analog to digital converter (with 4 additional digital inputs), which may be connected to the PC through the serial interface (RS232). The sequence of sampled channels, and sampling frequence are programmed by the PC while the maximal sampling frequency is limited by the data transmission rate, and at 115200 baud is equal to ca. 3kHz for 1 channel without digital inputs, and to ca. 500 Hz for 8 channel with digital inputs.
The analog input voltage range is -2.5V to 2.5V. The digital inputs may be used for recording additional digital signals, eg. the time code used to synchronize the recorded data with other events. The project is based on PIC16F84 (or 166C84) microcontroller, and MAX190 (or MAX191) ADC. The device is mounted on a small single-sided printed circuit board, easy to prepare even at home. [via]
PIC16F84 12-bit, 8-channel analog to digital converter - [Link]
This is versatile development board for AVR microcontrollers ATmega48/88/168. It is good for testing and debugging embedded programs. It has many built-in peripheries connected to microcontroller so you can use them without soldering. ATmega microcontrollers are produced by ATMEL and they include a lot of features: I/O, Timers, PWM generators, ADC, RS232, TWI, SPI, Analog Comparator, Oscillator, EEPROM These microcontrollers are very versatile, easy to program and easy to use. This is the reason why I like these microcontrollers and why I decided to make development board for them.
ATmega48/88/168 Development Board - [Link]
The module uses an inexpensive 8 bit Temperature Sensor the TMP37 from Analog Devices.Since the data was analog and the PIC16f84 does not have an analog input,an external ADC had to be used.Texas Instruments’ TLC549 was chosen for this.The advantage of this ADC was that it could communicate with the microcontroller serially.You may also use similar ADCs from Maxim-IC.The LCD is a normal 16×2 display which uses the Hitachi Controller HD44780. [via]
PIC16F84A temperature controller [Link]
The new PIC18F2550 Project Board was designed as the development platform for student projects.
The board features:
- MCU: PIC18F2550 with external xtal
- ADC: one channel 0-2.5V sigma-delta converter, Linear Technology LTC2400/LTC2420
- 6-channal 10-bit ADC 0-5V
- Display: Two connectors for text LCD or GLCD
- USB: onchip USB port with type B connector
- Power supply: onboard low dropout regulator, rechargeable battery
- Code programming: 10-pin header for In Circuit Loader
The board platform is suitable for developing the microcontroller based instrumentation. Students may build the signal conditioning board, plugs it to PIC project board, develops the code and programs it with loader cable easily. [via]
PIC18F2550 Project Board - [Link]
Building digital thermometers is probably one of the common tasks around embedded hobbyists. However more such projects more choices so more things that can be learned. So this one uses PIC16F876 microcontroller with MCP1047A temperature sensors connected to it. Thermometer displays two temperature values – inside and outside.
The hardware of this thermometer is pretty simple – PIC reads temperature sensors via ADC. Temperature values are displayed on standard 2×16 LCD and logged to RS232 at desired intervals. ASM code is available. [via]
Dual Thermometer with serial output - [Link]
Oscilloscopes built on 8 bit microcontrollers don’t give much power but they can serve is specific areas where signal frequency is really low. This one is built by using PIC18F2550 microcontroller which can give 12MIPS calculation power maximum. Actually scope is mostly limited by internal ADC. In this project 60kHz of sampling rate was reached. This is still enough to view few kHz signals. Analog signal enters directly to ADC input without any amplifier or buffer circuitry. So voltage is limited to 5V. In other hand design is kept really simple and can be repeated on any PIC18F2550 based development board. Firmware can be downloaded by using bootloader which can also be found in project page. [via]
Low budget graphical LCD oscilloscope – [Link]
