MikroElektronika Forum

Hello all,
I am very infrequent in playing with PICs - and its been perhaps a few years since my last PIC project.

The project I currently have in mind is one I worked out - with an Arduino yesterday.
But it would be wonderful if I could accomplish it with a PIC12F683

I would like to create a very simple piggyback for an 8-digit 7-segment display - which has a MAX7219 driver.
This would entail the PIC continuously looking at a port for an incoming number via SoftwareSerial at 9600 baud
Then display that number on the 7-segment display

Would anyone know of a MikroC project book which might have a project of this kind?
Or perhaps someone could point me to a code example for reading incoming data via SoftwareSerial?
I've searched through the libstock examples - and so far not found anything.

My first step would be to have the PIC read incoming characters and display them on the PICKiT monitor

If this request is inappropriate - I will understand - and I apologize in advance
Sincere thanks

Hi,

I have attached web pages for our boards which use MAX7219, you can find examples (PIC included) and manuals in the links below:
https://www.mikroe.com/serial-7-seg-display-board
https://www.mikroe.com/serial-7-seg-display-2-board
https://www.mikroe.com/serial-7-seg-8-digit-board

Hope this will be of some help.

Regards,

Ivan.

Thank you very much ivan!

I will look at these
Sincere thanks!

Glad to be of help.

Regards,

Ivan.

Here is the first iteration of the project
It is working code which has the PIC12F683 driving the 8 digit 7 segment MAX7219 display

The code currently does not have SoftwareSerial.Read functionality yet.

At this point - we simply have the PIC driving the display
After initiation of the MAX7219 - it counts from 0 to 65535

For anyone who might be interested:



// MiKroC - 1/18/2024
// PIC12F683 Driving an 8 digit 7-Segment MAX7219 Diaplsy
// Note: The PIC12F683 does not have Hardware SPI
// So we use MikroC's very nice Software SPI library
//------------------------------------------------------------------------------

// Choose 3 pins on the 12F683 as output pins to drive the MAX7219
sbit Chip_Select at GP0_bit;
sbit SoftSpi_CLK at GP1_bit;
sbit SoftSpi_SDO at GP2_bit;

sbit Chip_Select_Direction at TRISIO0_bit;
sbit SoftSpi_CLK_Direction at TRISIO1_bit;
sbit SoftSpi_SDO_Direction at TRISIO2_bit;

// Init Soft_SPI
Soft_SPI_Init();

// Variables we will use
long i;
long y;
char txt[6];
unsigned char result;

// FUNCTION used to transmit initial setup commands to the MAX7219
void max7219_init1() {
Chip_Select = 0;
Soft_SPI_Write(0x09); // BCD mode for digit decoding
Soft_SPI_Write(0xFF);
Chip_Select = 1;

Chip_Select = 0;
Soft_SPI_Write(0x0A);
Soft_SPI_Write(0x00); // Segment luminosity intensity set to zero because the display is quite bright
Chip_Select = 1;

Chip_Select = 0;
Soft_SPI_Write(0x0B);
Soft_SPI_Write(0x07); // Display refresh
Chip_Select = 1;

Chip_Select = 0;
Soft_SPI_Write(0x0C);
Soft_SPI_Write(0x01); // Turn on the display
Chip_Select = 1;
}

// ********************** MAIN ***********************************************************
void MAIN(){
OSCCON = 117; //Sets internal osc to 8 Mhz (Default) and stable
ADCON0 = 0; // all pins digital
ANSEL = 0; // all pins digital
CMCON0 = 7; // Comparators off.
TRISIO = 8; // 0001000 All GPIO output excpt GP3 which cannot function as output


Chip_Select_Direction = 0; // GP0, GP1, GP2 as outputs
SoftSpi_CLK_Direction = 0;
SoftSpi_SDO_Direction = 0;

// initialize the max7219
max7219_init1();
delay_ms(10);

// Clear all digits
for(i=1; i <= 8; i++){
Chip_Select = 0;
Soft_SPI_Write(i);
Soft_SPI_Write(15); // send x0F to clear each digit
Chip_Select = 1;
}
delay_ms(500);

// Count from 0 to 65535 as numbers to display
for(y = 0; y <= 65535; y++)
{
// Convert the number into a numeric text string
WordToStr(y, txt);

// iterate through characters in the text string and send them to the display
for(i=0; i <= 5; i++){
result = txt - '0';
Chip_Select = 0;
Soft_SPI_Write(5-i); // Send the number for each digit
Soft_SPI_Write(result);
Chip_Select = 1;
delay_ms(5);
}
}

//Do nothing at this point
while(1){
}

}