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Registered Member #162
Joined: Mon Feb 13 2006, 10:25AM
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 3140
I'm hoping that the 100 nF capacitor from 0V to MCLR will stop spurious pickup. I shall not worry about that yet - lots of learning to do first.
I must admit that using 555s would be MUCH easier, I'm using this Interruptor design more as a learning exercise than as a needed project should be useful when/if I finish though. I have found over the years that I only really learn stuff when I need to apply it, abstract learning doesn't work well for me, hence this project.
Also with this circuit configuration the project could become a timer, counter, heater controller, power supply regulator, etc. A pretty general purpose module. (RA0 and RA1 can be used as digital I/O ar ADC input channels)
P.S. just today worked out how to enter assembly code in MPLAB IDE.
Registered Member #146
Joined: Sun Feb 12 2006, 04:21AM
Location: Austin Tx
Posts: 1055
Ive been designing an AVR based interrupter. So far ive had my TC running regular pulse mode, burst mode, single shot mode (with extra long pulse lengths to 5mS), the A major scale, some songs i programmed in, and in the near future will take input from musical instruments and generate the necessary pulses to my DRSSTC (just finished the preliminary code for that, now i need to test it). Im also planning on a MIDI interface too.
If you want your micro to function, you *must* isolate it from the TC, i used a fiber optic cable for my tests so far. A fully enclosed aluminum box would probably be mandatory too. Battery power is always a safe bet for complete isolation from the noisy TC world.
Ive got many other fun things planned for my controller, but i cant give them all away right now . The amount of control you can achieve from these things is really great, and i hope to exploit that as much as possible and perhaps make my tesla coil into a musical instrument. This would be just about impossible with discrete components.
Luckily for me, the AVR code can be written in C. I tried assembler for awhile and stopped because it was so tedious. Im not sure, but maybe therer is a C compiler out there for your PIC? Might make development go much faster.
EDIT: Just thought i should mention some of the nice things about using AVRs (other than tons of free support that exists online). All AVRs have PWM outputs, basically just an 8 or 16 bit timer/counter, with an output compare match. You set some number (either 8 or 16 bit) and the pin is toggled/set/reset (its programmable) when the counter hits that value. Im running at only 4MHz, and this allows for .25uS step sizes, which is very fine control over the timing parameters. Also, to keep my interrupter feeling sorta analog, i use potentiometers to control various parameters. The pots just feed into some ADCs, and i use the digital result to set variables. I much prefer this to using push buttons to program in the timings.
Registered Member #162
Joined: Mon Feb 13 2006, 10:25AM
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 3140
I hadn't considered using potentiometers with ADC for control - sounds very convenient I have spare analog input pins so I may try later. In fact the more I think about it the better it seems.
Most PICs also have PWM, ADC etc. I'm using a 20 MHz crystal so I should get an adequate 5 instructions per microsecond.
I learnt assembler in 1976 using 8048 then 6800, (I stopped programming in 1979 so I'm a LITTLE rusty) I've never learnt C so I'll leave that for later too, even though C is available in the Microchip development suite.
Thanks all for the input
Just got to get busy with the programming now!
Further ideas and suggestions (no rude ones please) always appreciated.
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Interruptor / my first PIC project
. The amount of control you can achieve from these things is really great, and i hope to exploit that as much as possible and perhaps make my tesla coil into a musical instrument. This would be just about impossible with discrete components.