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Duxtech writes -
“10bulls decides to invent to world’s greatest battery powered, stepper motor driven, PIC controlled, CNC built mouse trap to rid himself of a pesky rodent. A much Better mouse trap – The little Bugger Noel (Rhymes with Vole) even gets a special treat in the end…”
PIC controlled, stepper motor driven mouse trap - [Link]
This is really great project that can be built very easily. There are two ways on getting this board on tour table – order a kit, or build your own, as all necessary schematics are available.
The core of this project is a 5×7 LED display assembled by using distinct LEDs. This allows you to generate primitive graphics and other display effects. Board also has 3 programmable buttons, piezo sounder, and RS232 connector. Most valuable thing for PIC starters here is that there are quite a bunch of well documented projects with detailed explanations and animations. The whole project description with examples takes over 20 pages. Have fun. [via]
Great project for learning PIC microcontrollers - [Link]
If you like gambling, you should have this toy in your collection. Electronic dice (die) is very easy to build – it uses several component and quite few code lines. Here you can find several Electronic die projects designed for different PIC microcontrollers by Pete Griffiths. These can be built on prototyping breadboard or as single application. Projects are ready for PIC16F84, PIC12F675, PIC16F690 and even on hard TTL logic. [via]
Electronic dice projects on PIC microcontrollers - [Link]
Mondo made an “electric roach motel” -
Using a PIC for this device provides a lot of useful functionality. The timing for the power pulse to the inductor is critical to getting the best Zap from your nine volt battery. The longer the current is on, the higher the voltage. Once the inductor reaches saturation, however, you are just wasting power. Some versions of this circuit charged up a capacitor (C1) with multiple pulses. This allowed the PIC to monitor the high voltage and produce a regulated output. Here is the current Source File. The version shown here just generates 400 volt pulses at a rate of 10 per second.
Make a PIC based cockroach shocker – [Link]
This is really cool remote control project that uses two communication links – IR and RF. The whole project consist of three main parts as separate boards: 4/8 channel RF transmitter, 4/8 channel IR transmitter and 4/8 channel IR/RF receiver.
Each of transmitters have 8 buttons. Transmitters can act as 8 channel transmitter for sending simple codes or four channel transmitter for sending ON and OFF command with button pairs. The receiver module has 8 relays. Receiver module can be equipped only with RF or IR module- base circuit is same. I wander why not to use both receivers and make it more universal… Source codes for PIC microcontrollers for all transceiver variations are available for download and can be compiled with MPLAB. [via]
Infrared and RF transceiver projects with PIC - [Link]
This is small versatile USB board developed by Brian Schmalz. He used PIC-USB capable microcontroller for easy USB interfacing and this way got simple parallel port replacement.
There is not much about circuit itself as there is only PIC microcontroller, USB connection and I/O pins. Such simple design allows making smal PCB that may fit anywhere starting from integrating in to test-boards and ending as stand alone applications. Author have compiled a nice list of various board versions that include different PIC microcontrollers, different PCB types that can fit in various applications like for plugging to breadboard, or very small SOIC board for tiny projects. Author also provides a list of various firmware versions along with bootloaders. To make things more easier there are few demo applications available for testing or modifying to your own needs. [via]
Simple PIC USB I/O board - [Link]
b0j3 writes:
Somewhat similar to PIC 12f675 mini protoboard, but extended and with additional boards. Using attiny2313. The scheme is pretty obvious since it only connects attiny2313 with the pins and the only additional elements are resistors and capacitor for reseting the microcontroller.
AVR mini board with additional boards - [Link]
This instructable describes how to drive hobby servos (the kind used in RC planes, cars, etc.) into your microcontroller projects. The control signals of servo are: a red wire, 5 volts works fine, ground (black wire) connectionsa and a control signal on the third wire (usually white or yellow). The signal is almost pulse width modulated, except that it doesn’t have a fixed period. It is composed of pulses of voltage, the duration of which determine the angle of the output shaft. The pulses can be from 0.9 ms to 2.1 ms long, 1.5 ms being the center position (in other words, pulse duration varies linearly with shaft angle).
Use a PIC Microcontroller to Control a Hobby Servo - [Link]
This project is a robotic arm made mostly from Wood. It cost less than $50 to make and has alot of the functionality that any normal robotic arm would have. It is controlled by a PIC Microcontroller and cloned PS1 controller.
Robotic arm made mostly from wood - [Link]
Chris made this excellent tutorial on creating a VGA test box with a PIC microcontroller. He writes:
For quite some time I’ve been wanting to create a device that outputs VGA signals. My main goal was of course to be able to display whatever I wanted on the monitor I was currently using. The goal of this project is to create a device that is capable of outputing VGA signals to a CRT monitor in order to display figures, text and characters. This will be done using a Microchip PIC microcontroller at 4 MHz clock speed. The programming required to achieve the VGA timing signals must be done in low level assembly because of the high level of precision that is necessary. The hardware assembly is just basic buttons, switches & wire that you can purchase from local electronics stores.
Simple PIC VGA tester - [Link]
