PIC Ports Analyzer

Dumps status of your PIC microcontroller ports into a nice rack.

In this project we'll use a Microchip PIC16x84 microcontroller connected on a PC serial port.
The code burnt in microcontroller will send to the Easy Control status of its ports to be displayed
into a nice rack designed in Rack Designer.

Step 1
Design rack in Rack Designer, or you may download example archive which contains the
picports rack (see screenshot on the left side of this article).
Controls on this rack are:
- a few borders
- a few labels
- a few leds

Step 2
Write for your microcontroller a program that will do next:
- make all ports inputs. Don't forget to enable weak pull-ups or (better) place pull-ups yourself (if needed)
- wait for the "go" string to be received on its rx pin
- fill a 16 bit variable (for PIC16c84) with state of the ports, like this:
portb.0(bit0)...portb.7(bit7) porta.0(bit8)...porta.4(bit12)
- send this variable as ASCII representation of its binary value on its tx pin
- and repeat, and repeat all

Below is the equivalent PicBasic code for this.
PicBasic is a very good Basic compiler for PIC microcontrollers. Take a look and you'll love it
for sure.

meanless var byte
ports var word
myportb var ports.lowbyte
myporta var ports.highbyte
option_reg.7=0
trisa=255 'PORTA input
trisb=%11111011 'PORTB.2 output (for tx), the rest inputs
pause 2000
starthere: serin portb.6,6,["go"],meanless
myporta=porta
myportb=portb
serout2 portb.2,16468,[bin16 ports,13,10]
goto starthere
end

Step 3
Write or open in Easy Control this script code (note: syntax is for Easy Control v. 1.4):

crlf=chr(13)&chr(10)
#Open rack. Don't forget to write the right file path
openrack (d:\analyzer\analyzer.res)
#Setup and open port
setport
openport (myport,9600,8,n,1)
label39="Connected on port "&myport
#You may show terminal window if you want to watch data flow
#showterm (myport)
again:
#Send "go" command to PIC
send (myport,"go1")
#Wait for data ended with CRLF to be received from PIC
repeat
received=receive (myport)
posofcrlf=pos (crlf,received)
until (posofcrlf<>0)
#Extract bit by bit and set leds accordingly
temp=mid (received,16,1)
led1=temp
temp=mid (received,15,1)
led2=temp
temp=mid (received,14,1)
led3=temp
temp=mid (received,13,1)
led4=temp
temp=mid (received,12,1)
led5=temp
temp=mid (received,11,1)
led6=temp
temp=mid (received,10,1)
led7=temp
temp=mid (received,9,1)
led8=temp
temp=mid (received,8,1)
led9=temp
temp=mid (received,7,1)
led10=temp
temp=mid (received,6,1)
led11=temp
temp=mid (received,5,1)
led12=temp
temp=mid (received,4,1)
led13=temp
#Flush receive buffer, to have fresh data next time
flush (myport)
goto again

Download this project :
PIC Ports Analyzer

More ?
Well,change code for bigger/other microcontrollers, timeouts, memory dumps, visual enhancements,...

Enjoy !