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.

Need help chosing a microprocessor

Status
Not open for further replies.

change1

New Member
I need a simple microprocessor that can calculate time. Time less than 1 sec. The plan is to have 2 trigger inputs. 1st trigger to start the clock, and the 2nd trigger to stop the clock, and the total time is the difference from start to stop. Also, I will need the micro to be able to do simple calcuation like add/subtract/divide and be able to output data to a display. Any suggestion on which microprocessor kit that i can use? I don't want to pay too much for it. thanks
 
Do you know how to program and if so in what language(s) ?
I would guess none but it is always best to check.

How much is too much money ?

How much time are you willing to put into learning to program and the project in general ?

What units of time do you need 1/10 1/100 1/1000 etc of a second do you need to use ?
 
it doesn't really matter what langauge it is...i'm pretty sure i can learn it...

I'm looking for under $100

Time is less then 1 sec...more like 200 ms



Do you know how to program and if so in what language(s) ?
I would guess none but it is always best to check.

How much is too much money ?

How much time are you willing to put into learning to program and the project in general ?

What units of time do you need 1/10 1/100 1/1000 etc of a second do you need to use ?
 
Or a USB enabled programmer like my Junebug that includes a little PIC18F1320 that can be programmed in BASIC, C, asm etc... $49US kit.
 
There are several different ways to do this and they will all work. Most of them will cost less then $100. We could possibly make it happen for $20 or $25.

First you want a microcontroller. PICs and AVRs are both good. I can help you with PICs because that is what I use. Either would work for you (and most) applications.

The micro controller can be done several ways. You can buy a micro controller with a built in BASIC lanugage for about $20 to $40 dollars. These do not require a programmer but are often less powerful then other choices. But they are not a bad choice if you are only going to do the one project.

The following choices allow you to program inexpensive PIC chips that range for about $2 to $10. These tools will allow you to program in C, BASIC, or assembler languages which are free if you pick the correct chips (microcontroller).

The second choice is to go with an PICkit2 programmer for $35 from Product Search - microchipDIRECT.

In place of the PICkit2 you can get a JuneBug which is a PICkit2 clone with a built in experimenter/target board. If you wanted you could develop you entire applaction using just this tool. You can get assembled or as a kit. See the link in my signature.

If you want to go very cheap you could buy a simpler less capiable programmer tool starting at about $15. I do not suggest it but it is an option.

I know that is a lot of choices. If I had provided my best solution additional posts from other members would follow to fill in what I left out.

If you want to learn to program I would go with the Junebug. I use them in the high school computer class and like them.

3v0
 
I should note that there is a full GCC port for the AVR processor line that is opensource and free, PIC's have no such opensource C. There are ASM (of course) compilers free for both, and BASIC compilers available for both as well. AVR ASM is easier to program in than PIC ASM.. For a hobbyist I recommend AVR's for a profesional I'd still recommend AVR's but you still need to learn to use PIC's. That being said there are more people on this forum that will recommend PIC's because there are fewer AVR users. Read about both and chose for yourself. If you go PIC I do recommend bluerooms stuff.
 
I have had nothing but good results using a serial programmer (like the AVR one I linked) for all but a few of the low pin count tiny's because they require high voltage serial programming. Just read teh supported device list of the programmer you chose. And keep in mind that there are more PIC devices out there than AVR's so the length of the list is not what you should be looking at, just at the chips that do what you want.
 
thanks for all the help...i will look into all the suggestion and buy one.. i will let everyone know what I ended buying? again thanks...
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Latest threads

New Articles From Microcontroller Tips

Back
Top