PIC Projects | Embedded Lab

Category Archives: PIC Projects

Another PIC-based digital thermometer and clock

Posted on August 11, 2014 by R-B Leave a comment

This DIY digital clock plus thermometer is designed by Joe Farr and is based on PIC18F25K22 microcontroller. The complete construction details of this project including circuit diagrams, PCB layouts and PIC firmware are posted in his website. He developed his firmware using Proton PIC BASIC compiler, which is available for download for free for this particular PIC microcontroller. He uses DS1302 RTC for timekeeping and DS18B20 for temperature measurement. The temperature and time are displayed on four 2″ seven segment LED displays.

Wireless monitor for gas consumption at home

Posted on March 25, 2014 by R-B Leave a comment

This low power wireless gas meter monitor built at a budget of about 35EUR is battery-powered and uses a JeeNode MCU board along with an nRF24L01+ transmitter to send the gas consumption info to a remote Raspberry Pi.

High Resolution RGB LED Color Mixing

Posted on March 9, 2014 by R-B Leave a comment

This application note demonstrates color mixing using the PIC12F1572 MCU. The PIC12F1572 microcontroller features three 16-bit pulse-width modulators (PWMs), which allow precise control over each RGB LED, allowing smooth transitions even at low-brightness/luminosity levels. Development efforts are supported by the following features of this demonstration board. • ICSP™ programming connector • EUSART bus tie-in points • USB or battery powered • Multiple test points A color mixing software routine allows developers to specify colors in xyY format with the PIC® device performing color mixing calculations.

Product review: iCP12 usbStick and SmartDAQ

Posted on March 4, 2014 by R-B 8 comments

In this blog post, I am reviewing iCircuit Technologies’ iCP12 usbStick development board and their freely downloadable SmartDAQ PC software. These two can be bundled together to construct a very basic 6-channel (analog) PC data logger. The iCP12 usbStick is a PIC18F2550 based USB development board that comes preloaded with Microchip’s USB HID bootloader that allows users to upload an application firmware directly through a PC’s USB port without any external programmer. It provides access to its I/O pins through 0.1″ pitch headers. A slide switch is also provided on board to select the operation of the board in Bootloader or

This serial LCD module gets power and data through one wire

Posted on January 30, 2014 by R-B Leave a comment

I found this interesting post on EDN by Benabadji Noureddine about driving an HD44780-based LCD module serially through one wire. It receives the display data as well as power supply through the same single wire connected to the UART TX pin of the host microcontroller. The LCD module itself uses a PIC12F508 microcontroller that receives the serial data from the host MCU and transfers it to the LCD in 4-bit mode. The clever trick in this design is during idle condition, the UART TX output from the host MCU remains high, which is used to supply power to the PIC12F508 MCU and the LCD.

« Older Entries Recent Entries »