projects based on pic mid range series

A mechanical hand with higher mobility for middle part.

How about an alarm clock for a working (or not!) couple?

It should be possible to program each day differently for each person if needed.

It should be possible to have a same time per day per person, or just for work days, weekends different.

It should play a different tune for each person, or different alarm tone.

It should be possible to let it play MP3 files.

It should keep good time alone, but able to use time signals as well for even better accuracy.

It should display day, date, time and alarm times without a lot of button pushing, none would be good!

LCD back lit display, with a remote display for the other side of the bed.

Should have battery backup.

Should wake up the person if the power fails AND the battery backup too (before the battery is completely empty of course!)

Or

How about a stepper motor tester with built in voltage/current adjustment, Bipolar & Unipolar connections, built in tests to see if the motor can accelerate/decelerate correctly.

Should drive at least 3 axis, with extra axis easily added.

Can be used to test a CNC router out, so input of parameters a requirement.

Inputs for end stop sensors.

Emergency stop button.

I would suggest using the PIC as the intelligence and Allegro stepper driver chips for the actual "driving" of the Unipolar motos - up to 3 amps.....the newer chips without external resistors....

Bipolar stepper motor driving would be nice to have as a seperate module perhaps.....

and and and and......

endless

I just bought an Arduino prototyping kit and a couple of books with suggested projects. There are also tons of suggestions on the net that I have found since I started nosing around.

Google Arduino.

Google is your friend.

Hooker

Yes, there are many applications for the PIC Mid range uC's. I started in college with the 8048 uC and then the 8051 uC and then jumped to the 6502, 8080 (Instructor thought 'we' needed it), 8086, Z80, 68000 way back in the mid 80's. This was learning about the uC's architecture, programming, and design and then using all that information and designing, programming and prototyping a working "system."

"We" have some PIC and Stamp systems here at work and they do not seem to be as fast or powerful as any of the one's I've listed for what they do... Albeit - I haven't had the time to properly analyze these systems but for what they're doing they're woefully slow.

One other thing that I couldn't find on one of these "Stamp" or "PIC" 'data sheets' is the actual timing information that would lend me the ability to actually "time-out" a program for a given system. Back in 'my day' I was able to - with the program [IE: with the program (in the comments) add how much time it would take for each instruction] - calculate almost exactly how much real time it would take to do a given operation within that given program... I don't see that ability with any of these 'new' uC's.

I learned to micro-code 6502's in hex on my Apple ][ back about 1978. That exercise convinced me I didn't have what it takes to be a "professional" programmer.

That said, the Arduino I'm playing with has the AVR ATmega328 chip on it. The data sheet is quite explicit about the features and details. I'm just learning about it but I have found the Arduino programming environment (a subset of the Processing environment) allows you to set delays down to a milli-second and there are provisions to micro code down to a micro-second so setting up timing on this chip should not be an issue.

Hooker

Yuk, the Stamp is ok for what it does but it is a system running an interpreted basic. It reads tokenised data from an external memory chip and then interprets the instruction in an on board interpreter.

Saying its very slow .. its like saying your tractor is no good at drag racing :)

Get a cheap development board from microchip, preferably at least 16 bit but even 32 bit is affordable. The compilers are free with some limitations that will not hinder you. Throw some code at at and watch it fly.