Category Archives: PIC Projects


Real-time clock and Temperature display on 16×8 LED Matrix

Posted on by One comment

Digital clocks and temperature meters are very popular projects. There are tons of such projects available on internet. This one is little bit different. This displays time and temperature both scrolling on a 16×8 LED matrix. PIC18F2550 is the brain of this project that controls the columns of the display through A6276 (a 16-bit serial input, constant current latched LED driver). The rows are controlled with a 74ACT164N (8-bit serial-in parallel-out shift register). The required current to drive the rows are provided by BC337 transistors. A DS1320 serves as the external real time clock, whereas the temperature measurement is performed

Read more

USB Development Board for PIC18F4550

Posted on by One comment

This article shows how to make a low cost USB development board for PIC18F4550 similar to Microchip’s PICDEM USB FS board. The Microchip’s USB stack examples can be compiled and loaded directly without altering the code. Access to each of the 40 pins is provided through female headers so that the connections could be extended to a breadboard easily during prototyping. The board has got a LM7805 voltage regulator with a polarity protection. This board will be very helpful in prototyping PIC based USB projects.

Read more

PIC based shaking LED dice

Posted on by Leave a comment

Electronics dice projects using push buttons are available all over the internet. This one is a little bit different. It is meant to provide the real feeling of shaking a dice by using a spring with weight and a wire. The two make and break contacts when shaken. The PIC16F688 microcontroller detects the contacts between the spring and the wire, and rolls the dice. After the spring motion stopped completely, the dice output number is displayed with glowing LEDs.

Read more

Determine capacitance by measuring the charging time

Posted on by One comment

There are many ways to determine the capacitance of a capacitor. You can use an oscillating circuit where the capacitor is a part of it and measure the frequency of oscillation to find the capacitance. Or, you can also use a resistor-capacitor network and measure the rate of voltage rise across the capacitor to determine the capacitance, if the value of the resistor is known. Here’s a similar project where a PIC16F88 microcontroller measures the time required by a capacitor to charge through a known resistor from 0 to half of the reference voltage provided, and the capacitance is determined

Read more

Why pay for Serial LCDs when you can make your own?

Posted on by 20 comments

HD44780 based LCD displays are very popular for embedded projects because they are cheap, easy to interface, can display characters, consume power lot less than seven-segment displays, and most of the present day compilers have in-built library routines for them. However, the only disadvantage is that they require at least 6 I/O pins of microcontroller. Well, you may ask, isn’t that less than what seven-segment displays require? Yes, that’s true but there are circumstances where you don’t have left enough pins for LCD display. For example, if you are going to design a temperature sensor based on a PIC12F683 microcontroller,

Read more
« Older Entries Recent Entries »