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  • Electronic Die*

    Built using a PIC16F84, about 4 hours worth of code and a few bits on a breadboard. This was the first time I've worked with PIC's so it was a learning exercise. I started with the 'Hello World' microcontroller equivalent i.e.  Blinking LED, then tried the 'Knight Rider' sequencing LEDs, and then hacked this together. The code is written and assembled using the Microchip MPLAP IDE V5.70.  I only did this as an exercise to familiarise myself with PIC assembler, but having got it working I decided I wanted it smaller and as I had just acquired some 12F675s I took the original 16F84 code and developed it further to work with the 12F675.

    For those of you who don't know, and to save you the trouble of sending me an email to point out your  ignorance, dice is the plural of die see here. 

    LED die using PIC16F84 Die on bread board, and Programmer (the neat PCB to left) with Die breadboard foreground and my circa 1985 Computer PSU, modified to get supply for PIC programmer. The assembler code was written to work, not as an example I'm afraid, so no apologies for the quality.  I  haven't done any further work with this since I decided the 8pin PIC12F675 was better suited for building a miniature die.  You should also note that if you do build a die using the 16F84 code below it is flawed in that it throws with unequal probability. 

    LED die using PIC12F675. Starting with the 16F84 code above I've modified and developed it further to run on an 8 pin 12F675 device.  This device has an internal 4Mhz oscillator so it needs no external support components and results in this minimum part die. I got this PIC for £0.99p so I reckon you can build the whole thing for about £2.50.  You don't need a power switch since the PIC 'sleeps' between throws and uses just a few micro Amps in this state.

    • PCB Artwork
      Three months after I built these prototypes I finally got round to producing a PCB for the die.  The artwork is available from the link below.  Rather than using discrete resistors the PCB layout uses a 9 pin 270R SIL resistor pack (Actually only needs an 8 pin one, the PCB will accommodate either).  When you fit the button cell battery holder, check to make sure it doesn't short out any of the component leads behind it.  You do need to use high efficiency LEDs with this otherwise they won't be bright enough and if you increase the current by reducing the value of the resistor pack it will impact on battery life.

The artwork above is the second revision of the PCB.  The photo's below show the die built on the first PCB version I did. This is pretty much identical to the second, I just manually tweaked some of the auto routed tracks and removed the connector for an external power connector.
Top image. Bottom image

  • Operation
    When the die first starts after power is applied it initialise the device and then goes to sleep until the SW1 'roll' button is pressed.  While the button is pressed the display is blank. On releasing the button the LEDs 'spin' for about 5 seconds. The 'throw' is then display for 20 seconds at the end of which the LEDs fade down and turn off over about 2 seconds.  If the throw button is pressed during this time, the die throws again, otherwise after 22 seconds the die goes back to sleep.  I've built four of these die, all running from CR2032 3V lithium cells.  One of these which I keep on my desk is still working on the original battery after 15 months.

Here's an Ultra Small Die that I've built using a 12F675.  This would be ideal for a surface mount design but I haven't gone that far with it.  This is built on an tiny bit of strip board, with some careful assembly and creative use of a baked bean can I've got down to the size of a 50 pence piece. 

  • Front View,
  • Rear View before attaching battery holder
  • Completed with battery holder attached (made from lid of Baked Bean can) attached. 
  • Third one with SM battery holder, PIC soldered directly into circuit.
  • LED die using PIC16F690
March 2007

For some reason the 16F690 PIC seems quite popular so here's yet another version of the die using that PIC.   While making the necessary changes to the 12F675 code for it to run on a 16F690 I also cleaned the original code up a bit and made it easier to change LED and switch port pins so you don't have to dig through the code to do it.

Source ASM and .HEX files can be downloaded here die690inet.zip

Sorry, no schematic for this. Use the one for the 12F675 here but make connections to the 16F690 as shown below. Because we have plenty of pins on this PIC, if you have a programmer with an ICSP connector, you can hook it up directly using the pins shown, if you don't ignore it.
                  __ __ 
 [ICSP 5V ] Vdd -|1  20|- Vss [ICSP Ov ]
            n/c -|2  19|- n/c [ICSP CLK ]
 [ICSP Vpp] n/c -|3  18|- n/c [ICSP DAT ]
            n/c -|4  17|- SW1
            n/c -|5  16|- n/c
           LEDA -|6  15|- n/c
           LEDB -|7  14|- n/c
           LEDC -|8  13|- n/c
           LEDD -|9  12|- n/c
            n/c -|10 11|- n/c
                  -----
  n/c -> no connection
  [ ICSP aaa ] if you want to program the PIC using
  ICSP
 
Running on my bread board.  The LEDs look a bit dim here as I was testing with a 3 volt supply but the resistors were selected for 5 volts.

LED Arrangement for die display

 B   C
 D A D
 C   B
  • Electronic Dice, I designed and built this around 1985 using discrete 7400 series TTL logic. I found it while digging out all the useful stuff that has laid around since I last played with electronics in the early 1980's.  I show it here just out of interest.

  • 12F675 as Flip Flop

    Code to make a 12F675 operate as a D-type or JK-type flip flop

    Since I implemented a D type flip flop using the PIC Logic Elements I thought I might go the other way and implement an entire D type flip flop in a single PIC.  This uses the edge triggered and port change status interrupts and was an opportunity to have a play with interrupts on the PIC.

    As written this code will cause a PIC to function as a negative edge triggered D type flip flop with active low Set and Reset inputs.

    'D' type flip flop

    Following the D type flip flop I've hacked it round to make a JK flip flop. This implementation has one extra 'feature'  that a normal discrete logic device doesn't have. After a reset, port GPIO5 (pin 2) is read and the logic level used to select either a positive or negative clock edge.
     GPIO5 = 1, negative edge (GPIO5 uses weak pull-up, so no external resistor is needed)
     GPIO5 = 0, positive edge

    'JK' type flip flop

This circuit receives the signal from a IR remote control, like those used to control your TV or DVD player and allows the signal to be repeated in another location.  

To get a 40Khz carrier requires an output to be toggled on and off 40,000 times a second, which means the code needs to execute in 1,000,000/40,000 instruction cycles; this gives a very tight 25 instructions in which to do the job. Fortunately it's an easy job to do so most of the instructions are just used to waste cycles.  It's not easy to get an accurate frequency with so little time and  few instructions cycles to play with but the IR receivers  will work several Khz either side of their design detection frequency so it's not a problem.

This code can generate a 40Khz, 38.4Khz or 37Khz carrier with a ~15% duty cycle.  The frequencies are configurable in the source code such that once programmed GPIO5 input on the PIC allows the selection of two frequencies.  By default the code is set to produce 40Khz and 37Khz carriers which are modulated by the logic level on GPIO2.  This would generally be connected to a IR decoder IC.

One thing I did find with the Sony equipment (I haven't tested it with anything else), 875nM IR LEDs don't seem to work, but the 950nM one specified works well. (TSUS5400, Mfg Vishay. Available from Farnell, part number 178302)

 
 Rapid Online - Rapid Electronics Ltd.

(See big LED version here)

My nephews got a Scalextric slot car racing circuit from Santa for Christmas. This was a blast-from-the-past for my brother and me and we were soon showing the kids how to race. However it quickly became apparent that "3-2-1-Go" wasn't the best way to start a race so I put this together to simulate the gantry lights used for starting F1 motor races.

When the circuit is first powered on LED's D2 and D4 light just to indicate the circuit is operating. 

When the start button (SW2) is pressed all the LED's turn off. They then illuminate sequentially at one second intervals until all five LED's are on.  After a random interval between 0 and about 7 seconds the LED's extinguish, signaling the start of the race.

Once the LED's have extinguished simply press the start button again to initiate another  race start sequence.  While waiting for the start button to be pressed the PIC is put into a sleep state.  This drops the current consumption to around 10uA

Notes:

  • The circuit is really quite simple.  I tested it on a breadboard with standard 5mm red LED's using 220R resistors from a 5Volt supply.  The one on the prototype board operates at 3Volts using  two AA cells.  I dropped the value of the LED current limiting resistors to 150R for this since the LED's I used weren't hi-efficiency types.  If you can use hi-efficiency LEDs you could probably use 270R or 330R resistors and operate it from a CR2032 3Volt Lithium coin cell.

  • With all five LEDs on, the prototype circuit was drawing about 25mA from a 3V supply. This drops to a meagre 10uA with all LEDs off which should allow the circuit to operate for many months, or even years depending on use, from a couple of AA cells without the need for a power switch.

  • The code enables weak-pull up on the Port B pins but the unused Port A pins are all configured as inputs and need pulling down to Vss.  

  • The interval between each LED turning on is consistent and approximately 1 second.  Timing is done using the internal timer which in turn runs from the internal clock. I'm happy that it's good enough for this application but if millisecond accurate timing is needed (I can't think why) you'll need to look elsewhere.

A new version of this circuit that can be used with Scalextric Sport and similar slot car tracks has jump-start detection. Full details are here 

Now have their own pages.

Click here for the RGB LED PWM Controller
Click here for the Serial controlled RGB LED PWM Driver
Click here for the High Power RGB LED PWM Driver
Click here for the Addressable Serial Controlled RGB LED PWM Driver

 

This code runs on a PIC 16F627A or 628A (and A.F.A.I.K 627/628 parts).  It uses the serial USART on the PIC to communicate with a PC. Through this a simple CLI (Command Line Interface) is implemented that allows commands to be sent to the PIC to control output lines and read and return the status of inputs on the PIC

The serial interface is configured to operate at 9600bps, 8bits, No Parity, 1 stop bit.

Port A is configured as the output port, not forgetting that RA4 is an 'input only'.  Port B is used as the input port, again RB1 and RB2 are used by the PIC USART so aren't available. In addition I have reserved RB0 for a Dallas 1-wire interface. Although the code isn't implemented here, the RB0 port along with RB1 and RB2 is masked from the input status command so bits RB2,1,0 always return 0.

To summarise;
 Outputs are RA0-3, RA5-7
 Inputs are RB3-7

The CLI commands and functions are described below:

;
; Code displays the following message after a reset
; 'PIC Serial IO controller ready'
; A '#' is used as the command prompt.
; A '?' is sent to the terminal when any command is either not 
; recognised, or contains invalid or insufficient arguments.
; 
; Commands (All commands are lowercase except the Restart command)
;
; v - display firmware version
; i - display value on input port
; o - display value of outputReg variable (see below)
; nx - set output bit x 
; fx - clear output bit x
; tx - toggle output bit x
;   where x is in the range 1 to 8 or 0 to operate on all bits simultaneously
; sxxxxxxxx/ - set output to bit pattern specified by xxxxxxxx mask
;   where x must be 0 or 1. MSB is leftmost. 
; All 8 bits must be specified and must terminate with '/'
;
; c - Continuous monitor and display of the input port
; . - Stop continuous monitor of the input port and return to command prompt
;
; m[io] - Toggle port value display format [ i = input, o = output ]
;   displays port value as hex 'HH' or binary 'bbbbbbbb' MSB leftmost
;   At startup the format will be hex.
;
; p[io] - Toggles between displaying the port status only, or printing a text string
;   followed by the port status.
;   e.g. with text "Input status : A5", without "A5"
;   At startup print mode will be port status only, no preceding text.
;
; w[ed] - Enable or Disable the weak pull-up feature on Port B
;   Weak Pull Up is disabled at startup.
;
; R - Do a software restart (note: Uppercase R)
;
;
; Note: All output commands work on the outputReg memory variable.
; This is copied to the output port register on completion of each command.
; The show output port command does not read the port register, it reads
; and displays the value in the outputReg memory variable.

Screen dump of a sample terminal session

  • Source Code (ZIP archive)
  • Hex (right-click Save As) for 16F627A (also tested with 16F628A)

Notes:

  • There are no schematics for this since it's designed as a building block.  You will need to interface pins RB1 and RB2 to a serial interface. RB1 is RXD input and RB2 is TXD output.  The code configures the PIC to use the internal 4Mhz oscillator so no external crystal is needed.

  • You can use a MAX232 or one of the many variants, to interface to a PC serial port. However, the schematic and PCB layout shown here for a simple discrete RS232 interface is cheap and and easy to construct and I've found it works well, or rather I've not found anything it hasn't worked with.  (I found the circuit design on the Net, I changed the transistors for types I had in my parts box and in fact you can use pretty much any general purpose NPN / PNP transistors here)

  • There are numerous applications and languages that can be used to communicate with and issue commands to the controller via a PC serial port.  I've used a free software terminal emulator called TeraTerm while developing the code.  The TeraTerm application also features an easy-to-use macro command language that can be used to automate the controller.

 

This code will work with a 12F629, 12F675 or 12F683.

A rising edge on the Trigger input starts a delay timer. At the end of the delay period Output 1 goes high and a second delay timer is started. At the end of the second delay Output 2 goes high. This is repeated for Outputs 3 and 4. The result is four outputs that go high in sequence with user defined delays between each one.

Once Output 4 has gone high, a high level on the Reset input causes all four outputs to clear and the program goes back to the initial state waiting for a rising edge on the trigger input.

Each delay is independent and configurable.  The delay can be set either to a period of 0 to 255mS in 1mS intervals, or a period of 0 to 25,500mS in 100mS intervals.

If the Reset input is tied high, the code will automatically reset as soon as Out4 goes high.

  • An example schematic and timing diagram is shown here PDF

The four delay periods are set by constants at lines 74-77 of the ASM file.

Each of the four delays can be set to multiples of 1mS or 100mS.  To do this you will need to edit the .ASM file at the following lines.  You can have a mix of 1ms and 100mS delays depending on your requirement.

  • Delay1 edit line 137
  • Delay2 edit line 148
  • Delay3 edit line 159
  • Delay4 edit line 170

The download ASM file is set for 1mS delays. To use 100mS delays, edit the call changing _Delay to _LDelay then reassemble the file.

call     _Delay ; call 1mS delay function
; change _Delay above to _LDelay for delay with 100mS intervals

The code was produced after I was contacted by someone who need a PIC to do this. They only needed two outputs but to make it more useful I've added the two extra outputs and the Reset input.