Questions tagged [pic]

PIC is a brand of 8, 16, and 32 bit RISC microcontrollers manufactured by Microchip. "PIC" originally was an acronym for "Peripheral Interface Controller".

More information on the Microchip website. Wikipedia also has a useful summary of the architecture and product families.

Related tags:

Useful links:

PIC32 tutorials

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What is the difference between a DSP and a standard microcontroller?

I understand that a DSP is optimized for digital signal processing, but I'm not sure how that impacts to the task of choosing an IC. Almost everything I do with a microcontroller involves the processing of digital signals! For example, let's…
Kevin Vermeer
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How can anyone use a microcontroller which has only 384 bytes of program memory?

For instance a PIC10F200T Virtually any code you write will be larger than that, unless it is a single purpose chip. Is there any way to load more program memory from external storage or something? I'm just curious, I don't see how this could be…
coder543
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RTOS for Embedded Systems

I have seen many articles that tell me I should be using RTOS for time management and resource management. My time has not permitted my own research, so I come to chiphacker for advice. I use low resource microcontrollers(MSP430, PIC) and was…
Kortuk
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How do I measure a negative voltage with a ADC?

I am working with a PIC micro-controller with inbuilt 10bit ADC and want to measure a voltage in the range of -1 to -3Volts. I thought of using an op-amp in the inverting mode to make voltage positive and then feed it to the adc of the…
Kevin Boyd
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Smallest AES implementation for microcontrollers?

Can anyone recommend a small, free implementation of AES-128 Rijndael for microcontrollers. Ideally, for the PIC18, though a general implementation in C would be useful. Compiling the axTLS implementation for PIC18 and encrypting/decrypting a block…
Toby Jaffey
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How can I measure the RPM of a Frisbee?

I'd like to make a little device I can stick onto a Frisbee that could measure stats such as RPM/speed of the Frisbee when thrown. Would this be realistically possible? I was looking into near-field communication to transfer the data from the…
Barodapride
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Fast and memory efficient moving average calculation

I'm looking for a time and memory efficient solution to calculate a moving average in C. I need to avoid dividing because I'm on a PIC 16 which has no dedicated division unit. At the moment, I just store all values in a ring buffer and simply store…
sensslen
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Internal or external oscillator

I always use the internal oscillator that pics have as I have never found the need to run anything at higher frequency than 8 MHz (which is the fastest the pics I use tend to be able to go). Are there any reasons, beyond going above 8 MHz, that mean…
SimonBarker
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C coding design - function pointers?

I have a PIC18F46K22 and program it with the XC8 compiler. In the end, I'll have a system like a pc with stdin and stdout. So in the main loop there will be a function which is checking if there is new input. If there's input, a function will be…
user17592
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Good book for non-beginner firmware development

I do a lot of firmware work at my job, but I'm looking for more advanced books on the topic. Things not like the basics of "what is an interrupt". I'm reading the O'Reilly book on embedded systems development which is OK, but not advanced enough. …
Seidleroni
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Firmware protection on AVR and PIC controllers

Can someone extract the HEX file that I burn in a microcontroller I provide them? If that is possible, how can someone ensure that their code is secured in embedded systems? In the case of PIC and AVR microcontrollers, how can one protect their…
Rookie91
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How to clean up a noisy signal?

I'm controlling a 4-pin PWM PC fan from a PIC16F684 with the fan speed driven from an ADC reading of a proximity sensor. This all works ok. I wasn't originally planning to use the tachometer output from the fan, but as it's available I been…
Roger Rowland
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PIC Microcontroller Programming on Mac OS X

How can I start PIC Microcontroller Programming on Mac OS X. Can I use an Arduino connected to my Mac has a programmer? Or do I need to buy specific programmer board and serial adapters?
littlebirdceo
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Pull-up and Pull-down Resistor Usage on Input or Output MCU Pins

Are pull-up/down resistors (whether internal or external) only needed for MCU INPUT pins? In contrast, an MCU pin configured as an OUTPUT "knows what level it's at" because it does the driving - a "floating" MCU OUTPUT pin tied to some input of…
The_Ders
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Ideal WiFi to Serial (or SPI) bridge?

What are some recommendations on an ideal WiFi to Serial bridge? My ideal qualities would be: Simple connectivity, SPI or Serial Reasonable fast speed, at least 1mbit/sec ideally (though probably wouldn't always need that fast) Inexpensive, I'm…
davr
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