Post 1, Week 5 (June 22 – June 28)
Friday, 6/26/09
PROGRESS
Since last week, I have finished soldering the capacitors and oscillators to the board, and have begun to work with the sensors and their corresponding numerical output values. I am still using the breadboard for this testing phase, and once I am happy with the results, (and find the wires that I need), will begin to solder the sensors to the board through those wires. I connected one of the flex sensors to the PIC, and wrote a simple program to have the PIC display a numerical value based on the output of the sensor. That value will be shown on the LCD screen of the box that I built last week.
The way this works is with the concept of a voltage divider. In electronics, a voltage divider is a simple circuit that produces an output voltage that is a fraction of its input voltage. That fraction depends on the values of the resistors in the circuit. The circuit and corresponding output voltage equation are as follows.
In the pictures, you will see that I took a screenshot of my computer while I was testing out the PIC on the breadboard for the first time. The window in the background is the compiler, which is where I write and troubleshoot the code for the PIC. The small window on the right is the PICkit programmer, which lets me download the compiled program to the actual chip. That specific code in the window turns on an LED that I connected to one of the pins on the PIC. This was just to make sure that everything was running properly, which it did.
I will try to post more pictures this weekend.
PICTURES
Screenshot…
Breadboard and LCD/ Speaker Box…
Testing display…
A little closer…
