Nuts and Volts - November 2009

■ FIGURE 7. Light Sensor Project Schematic.

to be well worth the investment.

MICROCHIP’S PIC16F1 MICROCONTROLLER FAMILY

Microchip recently released a new series of PIC16F parts called the PIC16F193X family. Featuring the company’s enhanced mid-range eight-bit core, these parts offer many more features than the previous PIC16F family such as higher program memory (up to 32K), a faster internal oscillator ( 16 MHz), and a lot more RAM (up to 4K). This allows these new microcontrollers to offer more peripherals such as additional timers and PWM channels. More communication channels are expected to be

available on future parts. These parts will be easily identified by the four-digit number after the letter F, starting with a 1. More details are available at www.microchip.com/enhanced.

MICROCHIP DEVELOPMENT TOOLS

Microchip recently released the PICkit™ 3 Debug Express and MPLAB ICD 3 tools which offer much higher programming speeds and better debugging capabilities than previous versions. There is also a higher-end MPLAB REAL ICE™ tool. As new products are released, you will need the PICkit 3 or MPLAB ICD 3, as the PICkit 2 and MPLAB ICD 2 will not support PIC16F193X parts.

CONCLUSION

I hope you enjoy the topics I’ve covered, but feel free to let me know your thoughts either way by emailing me at chuck@elproducts.com. I’ve also started a free newsletter at www.elproducts.com, so be sure to sign up for it. As this is my last column before the holidays, be safe and I hope you have a happy one. NV

NOTE: The Microchip name, logo, MPLAB, and PIC are registered trademarks of Microchip Technology, Inc., in the USA and other countries. In-Circuit Serial Programming, PICkit, and REAL ICE are trademarks of Microchip Technology, Inc., in the USA and other countries. All other trademarks mentioned herein are property of their respective companies.

Complete code listings are available at www.nutsvolts.com.

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