Thread: HU Quality AM/FM RDS/RBDS Radio with Features

Originally Posted by rando

FAQ updated

Just a sugestion Rando, when you update your Faq (which is a very good example of keeping everyone informed (thank you)) how about using another colour in the font so someone who has read it a number of times can spot the changes quickly. When you re-edit you can revert the previous edit to black.
("Hopefully this will cut down on the noise posted in this thread." Sorry about more noise)

A good idea but you still might miss things between updates. For the most part though, you don't need to read the Q&A part of the FAQ more than once. Most of the important updates should appear right up top in the Project Status / Documentation links. To help out a bit, I plan to add dates to those.

I read this board works from the parallel port. The parallel port is ghey. I want USB!

This mentality amuses me.... so many devices are serial based, yet someone will slap a serial to usb adapter on board and suddenly it's sooo much better... IT"S A SERIAL INTERFACE!! No speed differences, no nothing other then and pretty little USB adaptor, I for one am a little sick of all the issues associated with usb devices in the car... sometimes they work sometimes they don't. Especially with XP.... why not use serial? It'd be a heck of a lot more solid then USB...

you could always buy a serial to usb adaptor on your own, just to make it feel better....

Originally Posted by lopan

This mentality amuses me.... so many devices are serial based, yet someone will slap a serial to usb adapter on board and suddenly it's sooo much better... IT"S A SERIAL INTERFACE!! No speed differences, no nothing other then and pretty little USB adaptor, I for one am a little sick of all the issues associated with usb devices in the car... sometimes they work sometimes they don't. Especially with XP.... why not use serial? It'd be a heck of a lot more solid then USB...

you could always buy a serial to usb adaptor on your own, just to make it feel better....

Oh I'm with you on this 100%. And the real fun begins when someone actually ponies up to do the USB portion of the 18F microcode. The good news is that the same chip has an on board UART and enough processing power to easily implement RS232 over a couple of IO pins also. So firmware to support serial is well within reach of the proposed hardware design. Don't stress over this part. It's been discussed and well thought out so that pretty much all possible connectivity options are open.

Do you guys already have code started for the 18f ? If not, I might be able to help.

From what I've read, the underlying bus is i2c correct?

Kind regards,
CB

Originally Posted by cbergeron

Do you guys already have code started for the 18f ? If not, I might be able to help.

From what I've read, the underlying bus is i2c correct?

Kind regards,
CB

PM Sent (again).

I am not really familiar with the 18 family of chips, but what prevents you from using something like a 16F876. It has built in UART also, slap a max232 on it and its uber easy to get serial going. cant you use one of those FTDI rs232 to usb chips for usb? i also got I2C code working on the same chip, via the UART, IIRC (its been awhile...)

Edit: oh yeah, i have an extra 18F chip, i think. I got it in a pack of samples, but im pretty sure my programmer cannot do 18F chips. Let me know if one of you guys want it.

Use the I2C-RS232 code example from here.

http://www.emicros.com/pic1.htm

From the RS232 use the code to convert it to USB as found on the microchip 18F/16F series USB PIC app notes. With code alteration to suit the targeted MCU of course.

The PIC will then appear as an emulated comport via USB. or just write a straight I2C-USB code. All best done in assembly, C or BASIC are ghey in PIC

Go for the 16F because they are much cheaper.

Edit 16C I meant

I simply cant see the point in having a serial support when the USB is already there. Unless the cost of MAX232, 5 caps, 1 DB9 connector and space needed for those components are considered ok. Which I dont think so.

Just slap in a 16C745 USB PIC and a software emulating the I2C on 2 of the pins. A much much cheaper solution.


Here

1 x PIC 16C745
1 x XTAL
3 x capacitor
2 x resistor
1 x USB port