Continue to Site

Welcome to our site!

Electro Tech is an online community (with over 170,000 members) who enjoy talking about and building electronic circuits, projects and gadgets. To participate you need to register. Registration is free. Click here to register now.

  • Welcome to our site! Electro Tech is an online community (with over 170,000 members) who enjoy talking about and building electronic circuits, projects and gadgets. To participate you need to register. Registration is free. Click here to register now.

Custom LED Chaser

Status
Not open for further replies.

DoctorCain

New Member
This is my first official post! Greetings!

Okay, so I'm under a noob. I used to have a friend who was great at programming MCs, but as he is no longer with us, I'm forced to look elsewhere for assitance. Basically I need to make 3 LED Chasers-- one with 5, one with 7, and one with 11 LEDs respectively, with speed and sequence both changed by a momentary switch. I've got a bunch of parts and tools, including wires and LEDs, all I really need is the programmed MC.

I am in Japan now (close to Akihabara), so any extra parts that are needed will not be a problem.


It's not the cost of the parts that would be troublesome, it's the price of the programmer that makes my eyes bulge. With that said, I was told there are people on here that enjoy doing these things for relatively cheap, practice, fun, or because they're just so gosh-darned nice. If anyone fits into those catagories, I'd appreciate any or all help.

Thanks in advance!

-Brandon
 
Welcome to this forum Brandon..

A doctor eh!! "I have this pain all down my right arm"..... No only kidding.

I depends on which micro you choose.. Programmers can be very cheap to build... My first programmer was free as I used a phillips 8052 derivative ( came with a bootloader )

I now use pickit2 with all my pic endeavours... They are reasonably cheap, and seem to be a bit bullet proof.
 
Perhaps I should be more specific... I need someone to program it for me.

I have a few people who can write code, and some code is easy for me to understand. But even my engineer friend says putting the code on to the MC is what is the problem.

So yeah, I guess aside supplying parts and what I want it to do, I guess I need everything else.
 
Oh! a people programmer, not a hardware one..... Yes! We can be expensive...

Most PCB manufacturers will have the facility to program the chips before they are mounted, all you need to do is get one of your friends to provide the software..
 
I would suggest that you design your circuit to account for all 3 LED chasers, use a couple of I/O's to select which "flavour" i.e 5 channel, 11 channel etc. Also design your board to be ICSP friendly, that way you can upgrade the firmware in the field or initially if your production quantity is low. What Micro are you planning on using? There are plenty of development programmers available cheap for most. If you plan on making lots of these, then as suggested, most pcb houses can batch program the devices for you, for even higher higher quantities you can look at mask programmed parts from the manufacturer.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Latest threads

New Articles From Microcontroller Tips

Back
Top