pic-microcontroller

Microcontroller PIC16F877A is one of the PICMicro Family microcontroller which is popular at this moment, start from beginner until all professionals. Because very easy using PIC16F877A and use FLASH memory technology so that can be write-erase until thousand times. The superiority this Risc Microcontroller compared to with other microcontroller 8-bit especially at a speed of and his code compression. PIC16F877A have 40 pin by 33 path of I/O.

PIC16F877A perfectly fits many uses, from automotive industries and controlling home appliances to industrial instruments, remote sensors, electrical door locks and safety devices. It is also ideal for smart cards as well as for battery supplied devices because of its low consumption. EEPROM memory makes it easier to apply microcontrollers to devices where permanent storage of various parameters is needed (codes for transmitters, motor speed, receiver frequencies, etc.). Low cost, low consumption, easy handling and flexibility make PIC16F877A applicable even in areas where microcontrollers had not previously been considered (example: timer functions, interface replacement in larger systems, coprocessor applications, etc.).In System Programmability of this chip (along with using only two pins in data transfer) makes possible the flexibility of a product, after assembling and testing have been completed. This capability can be used to create assembly-line production, to store calibration data available only after final testing, or it can be used to improve programs on finished products.

A PIC16F84A Alarm Clock

Here is a simple PIC16F84A alarm clock. This page summarizes this discussion (in french) in my forum, where Samir (aka numerique1) requested for help to build a weekly alarm clock for his school. Many thanks to him for his tests and patience.

This clock counts seconds, minutes, hours and day of the week.
Time is displayed on 4 seven segment LED displays, and is adjustable with three buttons at start time (up, down, enter).
You can program the day of the week, hour, minute and duration of the alarms.
The number of alarms are limited by ROM space only.
The alarm is on the RA4 open collector output of the PIC, and is repeated on a decimal point of the display.

For once, the program is in BASIC (mikroBasic) and I hope it will make a good start for beginners.

Note that you can build it either for common cathod or common anode LED display