Samuel Aaron Ward's First PIC Project - Microchip PIC16F684

This is my first PIC project. I bought Myke Predko's "123 PIC Microcontroller Experiments for the Evil Genius", a PICkit 1 Flash Starter Kit, and downloaded all the free software. I also made my own homemade JDM-style PIC programmer, but I decided to go with the PICkit also to make things easier (less variables) starting out. I wanted to test what I had learned on a stand-alone board. The simplest (yet somewhat cool) thing I could think of was to program a 7-segment LED. And yes, I had to program each individual LED inside it to form the different numbers. The whole thing took me 4 hours to think up, assemble, and program! And with a $1.44 PIC (as opposed to a $50 Basic Stamp), the cost to build it was less than $5 for everything! Now I'm ready to design some really cool robots!!! :)

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• PIC
• Microchip
• PIC16F684
• PIC16
• robot
• seven-segment LED
• LED
• 7-segment
• segment LED
• electronics
• microprocessor

[GalaticTG]

heh looks alot neater then my first project :P

I just used 2 AA with no regulation

[SamuelAaronWard]

Thanks! :) ...That was just a test project. I'm still relatively new to this stuff, but I've made a lot of progress in a short time. Now I'm doing stuff with motor control, LCD displays, SD card external memory, timers, interrupts, sound, etc. I'm also starting to integrate PICs with other chips and processors for some really cool systems!

[SaadSadan]

Hi, I am a beginner, hope this will be a good start for me as well. Thanks.

[stewartdahamman]

@SamuelAaronWard nice, i have a copy of that book, and pic microcontrollers for beginners, all good books. Programming in C is cool, assembly looks terrible difficult.

I program a chip called the msp430 from TI, its cool uses next to no power and has all sorts of funky stuff built in - you would like it !

I would say its probably eaier than the pic.

Kudos to you my friend !

from Ireland :)

[patrickikis]

nice