external memory

[curiousCal]

I'm considering a learning exercise on a PIC. I would like to use a minimal PIC to log up to 8K words of analog data. A nice, easy, cheap device would be a 12F675. It has the necessary speed and ADCs. Oh, and it's in the Flash1 DevKit - I don't want to spend a bunch of money on a programmer when I don't even know which devices I want to program. However, the 12F675 has a tiny memory, and apparently would be limited to a software UART.

Can I attach some sort of external memory to a 12F675?

Or am I being too cheap? Is there a more practical PIC for logging data? If cost were secondary, which processor would provide flash programming, USB, 4-8K RAM, and socket mounting (not surface mount)? I realize this wish list is well beyond the FLASH1 category.

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

However, the 12F675 has a tiny memory, and apparently would be limited to a software UART.

A software UART is no problem, it's very simple to do and takes very little more code than a hardware UART. My tutorials deal with both hardware and software UART's.

Can I attach some sort of external memory to a 12F675?

Or am I being too cheap? Is there a more practical PIC for logging data?

This would be fine, the main problem is the small number of pins available. For a data-logger you don't require large amounts of processor memory - you store the samples in external EEPROM, usually I2C EEPROM, this requires 2 I/O pins on the PIC. Again, my tutorials deal with doing this!.

My tutorials are based on the 16F628, but the 12F675 uses the same 14 bit core - so the code can be changed over with very little alteration required