Interfacing PIC Microcontrollers
Embedded Design by Interactive Simulation
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Interfacing PIC Microcontrollers
Embedded Design by Interactive Simulation
Martin Bates
Amsterdam
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Boston
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Heidelberg
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London
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New York
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Oxford
Paris
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San Diego
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San Francisco
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Singapore
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Sydney
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ISBN-13: 978-0-7506-8028-8
ISBN-10: 0-7506-80288-8
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Preface
I have my students to thank for this book. Regardless of ability, each has had
a role to play. The more able students have always helped, through their proj-
ect work, to develop new ideas and solutions in electronic design. Some have
displayed an astonishing instinctive understanding of engineering ideas, and
some have been so keen to learn as to make teaching easy and rewarding.
There is never enough time to give each individual student the time and help
they deserve. So, one has to start writing to make sure that the essential tech-
nical information is at least accessible, and hope that students are able to make
best use of it.
Another spur to writing this book has been the development of the interac-
tive design software which has made the job of learning and teaching elec-
tronics that much more enjoyable. The Proteus software used in this book has
been developed by a talented team at Labcenter Electronics in the UK, led by
John Jameson and Iain Cliffe. They have a world beating product, and I wanted
to make a small contribution to encouraging students and engineers to use it.
It allows us to bring electronic circuits to life on the computer screen instantly.
It has always been a problem in electronics that you cannot see a circuit
working in the same way that a mechanical engineer can see a steam engine
pumping up and down. Sure, we can see the screen flickering on a television,
or an electric motor spinning, but you cannot see electrons or volts. As a re-
sult, it has always been that much more difficult to teach electronics. Proteus
is a big step towards bringing electronics alive, as such it helps us to partici-
pate more effectively in the communications and information revolution that is
all around us.
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plus a good range of hardware timers. A full description of this chip covers
most of the features that higher level students need for project work with mi-
crocontrollers.
When interactive simulation of microcontrollers became available, a new di-
mension was added. We could now see them in action without having to spend
a lot of time building and debugging hardware! These design tools allow even
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the inexperienced designer to create a working system relatively quickly. As a
result, my next step was to document the 16F877 and its applications, through
the medium of interactive simulation.
Proteus
©
from Labcenter Electronics
©
consists of two main parts, ISIS and
ARES. ARES is a layout package, which is used to create a PCB when the cir-
cuit has been designed. ISIS is the schematic capture and interactive simula-
tion software used to create the circuit drawing and to test the circuit prior to
building the real hardware. SPICE is a mathematical circuit modelling system
which has been developed over many years – these models can now be used to
bring the drawing to life. Onscreen buttons and virtual signal sources, for
example, provide inputs to the circuit. Output can be displayed on a voltage
probe or on a virtual oscilloscope. Now that we have microcontroller simula-
tion as well, we really are in business. The MCU can be dropped on the screen,
a program attached and debugged instantly. Electronic design has never been
so easy!
It is assumed that the reader is familiar with the basics of microcontroller sys-
tems, as covered in the first book. This one follows on, and is divided into three
main parts. In the first part, the 16F877 hardware and programming and the

microcontrollers, you will be able to modify the hardware and application pro-
gram to your own requirements.
If not, Labcenter have agreed a special offer for readers of this book: a special
low cost edition of ISIS Lite schematic capture, with PROSPICE Lite simula-
tion tools and PIC 16F877 licence. A key will be e-mailed to you which will
allow the demo programs to be fully tested and modified.
If you do not have a licensed copy of Proteus, you can download the demo ver-
sion and run the applications and modify the code, but not the hardware.
Please log on to www
.picmicros.org.uk for details; also visit www.labcenter.co.uk
and www.proteuslite.com for Proteus/ISIS information and downloads.
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