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How handy is the pickit 2 UART tool!

Posted: Fri Jun 25, 2010 6:37 pm
by brad
Have you guys ever used the pickit 2 UART feature?

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MAN IT IS HANDY!

I have been using it to help me understand exactly what is going on with my project in order to get it to work as I had planned.

For example, I have been working on a control box that has a 16x2 LCD display and four push buttons. The control box plugs into a big 2m x 2.5m LED display that I made last year for one of the hallways at work. You can control all sorts of functions of the display via the control box such as:
:arrow: change the animation
:arrow: change the speed of animation
:arrow: change the display scan rate
:arrow: change static graphics

You can scroll through a menu system on the control box and then push the OK button to select an option, the box then sends out a command to the display board, once the display board has carried out the command, it will send a completed signal back to the box to confirm that it has been done.

The code has been a little tricky, but the UART tool helps me along the way.

How? you may ask...

Simple, everytime I send out a command to the display, I also send the same info through the UART which will display on my laptop screen exactly what info is being transferred.

Here is a little example:
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you can also use it to send data from your computer to the pic to give commands or something like that.

Very handy indeed!