Re: Electronics Projects and PC Interfacing

[mattkotys@gmail.com]

Good point Danny - Really I am not attached to one product.  However, I am still shaky with electronics in general, and that Arduino has so much fanfare recently, it seems like a great playground for a novice, i.e. tutorials and project ideas.  Plus since there is an open hardware and software push behind it, makes me gravitate toward it.

PICs do seem to be more than capable, so maybe I can make a distinction once I'm more fluent at all of it.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

-----Original Message-----
From: Danny Sauer <danny@dannysauer.com>
Date: Sun, 20 Dec 2009 20:03:30 
To: <luci-discuss@luci.org>
Subject: Re: Electronics Projects and PC Interfacing

Matthew Kotys wrote:
> I have done a few "Hello World" projects on PIC uCs, but I'm sort of
> bored with blinking lights in succession and triggering a piezo buzzer.

Is there any particular reason not to investigate the cooler features on
the 8-bit PIC microcontrollers?  There are flash memory PICs that can
directly speak at RS232 levels, included buffered UARTs, have USB
interfaces available, etc.  You can get them for single-digit prices
from places like Digikey, and there's zillions of tutorials out there
with different examples.

Not that the other suggestions are bad, but if you already have some
knowledge of the PIC assembler and the equipment, there's a *lot* more
you can do aside from turning things on and off.  The Dallas one-wire
protocol is pretty easy, and iButtons + the other one wire devices are
neat, for example.

--Danny




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