darlo

hello i am darlington i am working on a led scrolling display i want to display "welcome to electrical engineering" and it should be scrolling i want to use either shift registers or microcontrollers but do not ve enough experience pls can you help me out thks and expecting reply.

Nigel Goodwin

You might check my 8x8 LED PIC example in my tutorials?.

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PIC programmer software, and PIC Tutorials at:
http://www.winpicprog.co.uk

Hank Fletcher

Hi again, darlo, and thanks for posting your inquiry on the public forums (I finally found it!). As I mentioned in the PM, you need to tell people here as much about what you know already about exactly what you want to do. As you can see, Nigel's also leaning towards a microcontroller (PIC) solution.

What you need to make clear are the details of your LED display: is this some prefabricated display you're trying to interface with, or are you making it from scratch? If the latter, are you working with individual alpha-numerics, or individual LED lights?

Because I know you're a novice to microcontrollers (and for a few weeks experience, so am I), here's how I'd go about it:
1) Know all the details of the final display medium (power requirements, interface protocol, etc);
2) Find a PIC that will do the job. I know the 16F88 could, but would be more greatly dependent on external hardware support. Factoring what the final display will be, you might justify going for a PIC with a higher output pin count. Perhaps someone else on the forum might suggest one?
3) Get an ICD2 compatible PIC programmer. This is the hardware you connect to your computer to program the PIC with the instructions you want it to execute (in your case, the text message you've described);
4) Download MPLAB from the Microchip website. This is the software you run on your computer to control the programmer and program your chip;
5) Download Great Cow BASIC. Because you're a novice, microchip assembly language will seem a bit daunting at first. Writing your code in a BASIC compiler will be much easier, and by reviewing the compiled assembly code you will learn a lot about how the PIC's assembly language works;
6) Design and build the hardware. This step, of course, will likely manifest itself earlier on in your project. As you learn about what a PIC can and can't do (very compact and fast logic and feedback control, but low power output), you'll have a better idea if what you'll need to complement the PIC in your design.

Good luck, and please let us know how you get along. I think you'll find the forum members here quite receptive to your inquiries should you be willing to share as much about your project - and what you do and don't know - as possible.