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  1. Old Steve

    Programmable Resistor suggestions?

    A digital pot and a micro with A-D?
  2. Old Steve

    MPU Clock circuit

    I wonder why they elected to use an external oscillator? Perhaps to run the chip at a frequency that was outside the normal (frequency) range of the internal oscillator? Usually, I only see an external oscillator used when synchronisation with another device is necessary.
  3. Old Steve

    Capacitor Questions

    Coincidentally, I'm using an almost identical LM317T circuit in my current project, for float charging a 12V 1.4Ah SLA battery. The only difference is that I added current-limiting, so that excessive current wouldn't flow if the battery voltage was extra-low. When the current through R1 hits...
  4. Old Steve

    Arduino vs raw PIC, Atmel etc

    Thanks Rick, I appreciate the info. Good to hear that there's no loss of speed in that regard, unlike the old Basic Stamps and their tokenised, interpreted language. Gotta get used to this new term 'sketch', too. I had to look it up yesterday.
  5. Old Steve

    Switches circuits and rewiring a toy gun - Newbie needs direction

    The biggest problem (for you) will be a microcontroller to run the show. Hopefully, we can devise a circuit that doesn't require one, but there'll still be a fair bit of electronic knowledge needed to connect the parts together. Some experimentation will be needed with the sound side of things...
  6. Old Steve

    Capacitor Questions

    So where are you? Anywhere near Nowra NSW? Now, I have to say, completely ignore that first circuit, for now at least. You shouldn't fool with anything that's directly off the mains. Way too dangerous. You could die! Explaining the theory will make you want to try it, so I won't. Keep working...
  7. Old Steve

    Switches circuits and rewiring a toy gun - Newbie needs direction

    The micro couldn't do any audio filtering as such, the external components would be responsible for this, but I guess you mean filtering in terms of which sound amd flash is produced. That bit's easy. I'm stumped on the semi-random 60/40 part, though. Still thinking..... Someone might come up...
  8. Old Steve

    Switches circuits and rewiring a toy gun - Newbie needs direction

    Or this one, but since the sounds play serially, it might require muting the sound output with the micro, then triggering through the sounds to the rifle shot und unmuting the output at that point to produce a single shot...
  9. Old Steve

    Switches circuits and rewiring a toy gun - Newbie needs direction

    A bit of playing with this chip might be able to produce a single gunshot sound:- http://www.eleinmec.com/article.asp?40 http://www.eleinmec.com/datasheets/ds_umc_um3561_sound_effect_generator.pdf
  10. Old Steve

    Switches circuits and rewiring a toy gun - Newbie needs direction

    Hmmm. Interesting. If a micro-controller is used, random isn't hard, but semi-random 60% / 40% requires some thought. The 'click' wouldn't be too hard, either. Simply pulsing a speaker would give a reasonable click. (Will a small moving-coil speaker fit in the gun? If not, a piezo speaker might...
  11. Old Steve

    how can I create a positive logic pulse from a steady high input?

    Excellent - glad you got it sorted out. And no, you're not at all hard to follow compared to some people.
  12. Old Steve

    So I missed a memo.....or three or four

    Here's a simple code example I wrote a few weeks ago, renamed as .txt to enable uploading:-
  13. Old Steve

    Arduino vs raw PIC, Atmel etc

    Ah, right, so the Arduino language is an interpreted language? (As opposed to a compiled language.)
  14. Old Steve

    So I missed a memo.....or three or four

    Just the register names are used in PICBasic - they're still used directly in PICBasic without assembly routines. Here's a link to the manual, if you'd like to check it out:- http://melabs.com/resources/pbpmanual/ This is an old version of the manual, but covers all of the basics of the language.
  15. Old Steve

    Arduino vs raw PIC, Atmel etc

    Thanks Rick, that's what I thought. So they're useful for developing an idea, then swapping to the atmega chip for production? No language problems? ie Can code developed for the Arduino be directly programmed into an atmega without alterations?
  16. Old Steve

    So I missed a memo.....or three or four

    To set the pins as inputs or outputs:- In this case, I'm setting pin 0 on Port B as output, and the rest as inputs. TRISB=%11111110 Then to address that pin and set it high or low:- PortB.0=1 or PortB.0=0 Alternatively, assuming all the ports pins are outputs, you can address the entire port:-...
  17. Old Steve

    So I missed a memo.....or three or four

    Oh, and PICBasic Pro can be used from inside Microchip's MPLAB IDE, too.
  18. Old Steve

    So I missed a memo.....or three or four

    Yes, for the majority of my projects. I have a C compiler that I use when really necessary, or even smatterings of inline assembly, but PICBasic covers most of my needs. You can also use C or assembly modules with PICBasic, then link them in. I mostly only need to use PIC16F84s, 16F628s or...
  19. Old Steve

    So I missed a memo.....or three or four

    You could also check out PICBasic (Pro), from Micro Engineering Labs. A Basic language especially developed for PICs. Very easy to use.
  20. Old Steve

    how can I create a positive logic pulse from a steady high input?

    This would be my solution:- In fact, I'd omit the diodes too and use 1 pullup resistor.
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