50 PIC Microcontroller Projects: For Beginners and Experts

This book contains 50 fun and exciting projects for PIC microcontrollers such as a laser alarm, USB teasing mouse, eggtimer, youth repellent, soundswitch, capacitive liquid level gauge, "finger in the water" sensor, guarding a room using a camera, mains light dimmer (110-240 volts), talking microcontroller and much more. Several different techniques are discussed such as relay, alternating current control including mains, I2C, SPI, RS232, USB, pulse width modulation, rotary encoder, interrupts, infrared, analog-digital conversion (and the other way around), 7-segment display and even CAN bus.

You can use this book to build the projects for your own use. The clear explanations, schematics and even pictures of each project make this a fun activity. For each project the theory is discussed and why the project has been executed in that particular way. That means you can also use this book as a studybook, or as basis for larger and more complicated projects. All projects use a breadboard so modification and expansion is easy.

Three PIC microcontrollers are used, the 16f877A, 18f4455 and 18f4685. It is also discussed how you can migrate your project from one microcontroller to another - 15 types are supported - including two example projects.

All software that is used in this book can be downloaded for free. That also applies to the open source programming language JAL. This powerful and yet easy to learn language is used by hobbyists as well as professionals.

This book can also be used as a reference guide. It explains all JAL commands, as well as the expansion libraries. Using the index you can easily find example projects that illustrate the use of these commands. Even when you have built all projects in this book you will still want to keep it within arm's reach.