PIC Projects | Embedded Lab

Category Archives: PIC Projects

Bluetooth connected thermometer

Posted on October 17, 2016 by R-B Leave a comment

Bluetooth connected thermometers are making their way into many consumer products such as fitness devices, medical activity trackers, BBQ Grills, etc, to allow temperature monitoring through smartphones and tablets. This reference design from Microchip illustrates the implementation of a Bluetooth-connected digital thermometer using Microchip’s PIC16F1519 MCU and RN42 Bluetooth Module. Powered by two AAAA batteries, this design measures temperature in Fahrenheit or Celsius using the Melexis MLX90614 non-contact infrared thermometer sensor. It also implements input touch buttons using mTouch integrated capacitive touch technology. An OLED display on board is used to demonstrate stand-alone design capability, while the Bluetooth module demonstrates smartphone/tablet connected design

Universal motor driver for PIC16F MCUs

Posted on October 11, 2016 by R-B One comment

This application note from Microchip presents the design of an open-loop speed control TRIAC-driven universal motor driver board. An interesting thing about this design is it uses Core Independent Peripheral (CIP) on an 8-bit microcontroller to optimize the processing speed and free up the CPU usage. The complete source code and reference design material are included. The universal motor used in this application note runs from 120V-240V AC power and is driven from a TRIAC. A bench test for running a 220V universal motor has been done. The circuit is powered off the line from an non-isolated AC supply; therefore, safety precautions should be taken when working with this type of system. An isolated on-board UART

HID IR Keyboard using PIC18F25J50

Posted on October 9, 2016 by R-B 2 comments

A PIC18F25J50 based USB HID IR keyboard from Suraj Bhawal uses a TSOP IR decoder IC to receive IR signals from an IR remote and convert them to HID inputs. For this project, I used a PIC18F25J50 microcontroller with a TSOP IR decoder. I used this microcontroller because of three reasons. First, this mcu is available in tiny QFN package which helps reducing the overall board size. Second, this mcu supports usb communication without using an external crystal/resonator which again helps reducing the board size. And third, is that I have several of these laying around in my stock. The list of

Vibrating Mesh Nebulizer using PIC MCU

Posted on September 28, 2016 by R-B Leave a comment

A nebulizer is a medical device that is used to transform a liquid medicine into aerosol droplets so that patients with pulmonary diseases can easily inhale the medication into lungs. Medical nebulizers are commonly used for the treatment of COPD, asthma, cystic fibrosis and other respiratory diseases. This application note from Microchip demonstrates an implementation of driving a piezo mesh disk in a vibrating mesh nebulizer demo. The demo system features a Microchip 8-bitPIC16F1713 microcontroller-based piezo mesh disk driver board and a nebulizer plastic housing. A significant innovation made in the nebulizer market is vibrating mesh technology. Basically, a vibrating mesh nebulizer is composed of a liquid reservoir with a

Using Easy Pulse mikro with MPLAB Xpress board

Posted on September 7, 2016 by R-B 2 comments

Easy Pulse mikro is our new educational pulse sensor in a mikroBus form factor. Like our previous Easy Pulse sensors (Easy Pulse and Easy Pulse Plugin), it is also based on the principle of transmittance photoplethysmography (PPG) applied to a fingertip. The sensor consists of a pair of IR LED and photodiode to detect the cardiovascular pulse signal from the fingertip. The output of the sensor is passed through a necessary instrumentation amplifier to derive a nice and clean analog PPG waveform. The analog output is routed to the AN pin of the mikroBus connector. In this article, I will describe how

« Older Entries Recent Entries »