Please help a newbie....

Hi everyone.

I've been given the task of creating a system where by we send the character 1,2,3,4,5 or 6 out on the Serial Port, and a corresponding LED lights up.

I've used PIC's before, but never with Serial, and to be honest it was a long time ago!

Can anyone suggest a Serial board with LED outputs, or adise me on how to get started?

Any help would be great.

Cheers
CKF. :?

Did you ask in the PIC forum of this site ?
What you're trying to do is a really simple task. What PIC are you planning to use ? Some of them have built in USART, so the routines needed to send/receive data are tiny (less than 10 lines of assembler code).

sbayeta said:

Did you ask in the PIC forum of this site ?
What you're trying to do is a really simple task. What PIC are you planning to use ? Some of them have built in USART, so the routines needed to send/receive data are tiny (less than 10 lines of assembler code).

Click to expand...

Hi,

I did ask in another forum area, but got no reply. I didn't chose the PIC forum as I wasn't sure if using a PIC was worth it if someone knew of a board already made up or a more simple approach.

I've no plans on which chips to use at all - it's at the "can it be done" stage really and as I've not touched electronics for 6 years, I'm somewhat clueless!

You say it's easy - where should I be starting. PIC or not.

Cheers

I'd use a PIC. They are inexpensive and easy to use.

As I said before, some PICs have built-in USART. Take a look at the 16F87x family.

You will aslo need MAX232 (RS232-TTL interface), a crystal (maybe 4MHz) and some other components.

Take a look at the Microchip's Application Notes section.