How to hook up a digital potentionmeter to a pic axe microcontroller

[zack501]

I dont really understand exactly how digital potentiometers work so ill just explain what im trying to do. I am going to be using either a pic axe 18m2 or 20x2 i havent deciceded but it will have an infrared reciever and a remote that i would like to use to adjust the resistance of the potentiometer. when i press one button it will raise the resistance by whatever increment then when i press another it will lower it. is it possible to just have the potentiometer hooked to 2 pins of the microcontroller. one to increase and one to decrease and whenever i press the button to increase the resistance, curreent gets sent through that lead to the pot and thru the other lead to decrease. the resistance i am wanting to change is in a whole other circuit. it is an rc servo so when resistance is increased less volts will go to the servo and it will be less "touchy". is what i am trying to do possible?

 

[MikeMl]

What is the part number of the digital pot?

 

[zack501]

Thats the thing im not sure anything about them so I don't really know the differences. What ones do what, etc... so i haven't picked one im just wondering if with the correct one that it is possible

 

[RMMM]

Yes, you can use a digital pot with PICAxe or any other uC.

 

[crutschow]

Just be aware that the digital pot normally needs to be connected to circuit common, so you can't use it in a application where one of the pot elements is not connected to common.

 

[MikeMl]

If you are controlling an RC servo, why not just use the uC to control the pulse width fed to the servo directly?

 

[zack501]

welll because i just started teaching myself microcontrollers yesterday i dont know about that stuff but i just looked it up and that sounds like a much better solution. i would still be able to program it to be able to adjust how "slow" or how "little" the servo turns per the input correct?

 

[RMMM]

Yup.

You can make clock if you want, or a propeller. You can change speed, direction, or point to point angular changes.

 

[MikeMl]

Some light reading for you

**broken link removed**

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