Weekly Update: Visual(Thursday)

So maybe not weekly. Its been awhile since we have posted here. Been a pretty crazy quarter so far however we have peen making some progress. Right now we are working on creating a PIC USB device that can configured to send any data to the computer. This has proved to be a complex procedure. I was able to get Visual Studio from the UW website and have begun to figure out how to write basic .exe programs. By taking apart the WFF code we have begun to dissect the basic setup for the windows application. We will update when we get communication.

Hello World in C

Using two compilers, we were able to complete the Hello World tutorial and get a LED to blink on pin 20. Here a picture of said project with LED on and off.  The code page has been updated as well.

USB!

And that is a USB win!  We have accomplished computer controlled LED blinking. We are going to have to find a camera for video, but by following the USB tutorial on the links page we were able to turn a LED on and off with a click of a mouse. It was extremely cool. Next step is to flush out the example program to control more pins and take input from other sensors.

USB Tutorial

We are now working on the USB tutorial for the 18F4550. This is proving to be much more difficult than the blinking LED. Our main problem is the C compiler for Mplab. However here is the schematic that we are following. It was obtained the from website linked to in the links section: USB tutorial.

Also, here is the female USB-Type B wiring diagram.

Platforms

These are the three platforms we will be using(linked to mouser).

PIC (18f4550)

MSP430 Launchpad

EZ430-RF2500

Jumping into PIC’s

Here is the setup for our basic foray into PIC’s. We found this project on a tutorial page for 18F PIC’s called http://www.pic18f.com.  All of these tutorials are based on the 18F4550. Since we are using the PicKit3 programmer here is the pin out.