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Category Archives: PIC Tutorials

A brief overview of Allegro ACS712 current sensor (Part 2)

Posted on January 25, 2012 by R-B 37 comments

In the first part of this discussion, the features of ACS712 device were briefly discussed. Now we will use that theory to implement the ACS712 sensor to make a simple DC current meter. The analog output voltage from the sensor is measured through an ADC channel of the PIC16F1847 microcontroller. A voltage to current conversion equation will be derived and implemented in the firmware of the PIC microcontroller and the actual load current will be displayed on a character LCD.

Lab 20: Interfacing a KS0108 based Graphics LCD (Part 2)

Posted on January 5, 2012 by R-B 7 comments

In the first part of this tutorial, we discussed about Winstar’s WDG0151-TMI GLCD module, which is a 128×64 pixel monochromatic display built with KS0108B and KS0107B compatible display controllers. The module was interfaced to a PIC16F887 microcontroller and a test program was written in C to demonstrate how to implement the KS0108 instruction set in the firmware of PIC to activate display pixels on the screen. We wrote our subroutine programs that would turn the GLCD on, move the display location to a specified row and column, and draw a pixel at a given coordinates. You might have realized it

Lab 20: Interfacing a KS0108 based Graphics LCD (Part 1)

Posted on December 20, 2011 by R-B 36 comments

The use of a graphical LCD (GLCD) drastically changes the look of your project. It provides more freedom for presenting data than the HD44870 based character LCDs. Today we will see how to interface a KS0108 (name of the display controller chip) based GLCD to a PIC microcontroller. This experimental tutorial is divided into two parts. In the first part, we will see how to write a firmware for the PIC microcontroller to initialize the GLCD and send data to plot points and lines on the screen. The second part will focus more on exploring the built-in GLCD Library of

Connecting multiple tact switches on a single input pin of a microcontroller

Posted on November 18, 2011 by R-B 6 comments

Normally one tact switch requires one digital input pin of a microcontroller. Some designs implement keypad style multiplexing to get multiple switches on fewer inputs. However, there exist other techniques that allow you to connect many switches on a single input pin of a microcontroller. This tutorial demonstrates one such technique as applied to PIC12F683 microcontroller. In this example, there are four LEDs and four tact switches connected to the PIC12F683 microcontroller. While each LED is controlled through an individual I/O pin, the four switches are connected to one ADC input pin of the PIC12F683 microcontroller.

Lab 19: Play musical notes

Posted on November 3, 2011 by R-B 22 comments

We have discussed in the past experiments how to use a PIC microcontroller to do a variety of things from flashing an LED to driving a motor, etc. Today, we will see how to play notes of a song with a PIC microcontroller. Musical notes are simply sound waves of particular frequencies. If the frequency of a note is known correctly, a microcontroller can be programmed to play the note by generating a square wave (of the same frequency) signal at one of its I/O pins. The signal must be fed to a speaker to listen to the sound. Here,

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