Off topic poll: What do you do?

[Laurent chouinard]

Please don't mind the offtopic post here, but i've been watching these forums for a while and well, we're always talking about PICs and programming them with the CCS compilers, which is fine.

But my thirst for knowledge and my never satisfied curiosity is piqued. What are you guys working on? If that's not a trade secret, or without the greater details, what type of thing are you building?

I've seen Sherpa Doug talk about someone else's marine sensors devices.

I for myself am making interfaces between money-handling and money-recognizing machines.

Oh my oh my am I curious
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This message was ported from CCS's old forum
Original Post ID: 9277

[Sherpa Doug]

Sometimes I think I am like the "actor" that actually earns a living waiting on tables...

I like to think I am the engineer for the navigation system of the LampRay inspection robot that crawls on the bottom of ship hulls measuring steel thickness, paint thickness, looking for cracks, warps, etc. See www.imetrix.com for more general info.

Unfortunately we have found over the last few years that no one is willing to pay money to find out if their ship is about to fall apart like the Prestige receintly off the coast of Spain, the Erica earlier, and hundreds of other ships over history.

So for the past few months I have been paying the bills by working as a consultant for another local oceanographic company (Cape Cod is full of them) writing code for some sensors, designing some PC boards, doing daily battles with their Byzantine stock and parts numbering system, and generally trying to stop them from tripping over their own ISO9000 corperate [spam].

In need of some Christmas Spirit
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This message was ported from CCS's old forum
Original Post ID: 9283

[Dale Herman]

For work:

1) A guy I work with designed an high voltage arc controller

2) We are working on a dual axis motor controller. 18F458
- One DC servo with driver
- One microstepping stepper with driver
- CAN interface
3) USB-CAN interface (18F258)

Dale
P.S. This is my first PIC project. I've come up to speed fairly quickly. All of the motion control code is mine. PID, vff, etc
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This message was ported from CCS's old forum
Original Post ID: 9289

[david smith]

I'm a semi-digitized analog engineer. Currently updating sensor and controller designs for plant (chlorophyll) detection applications: primarily in agriculture. [www.greenseeker.com]
- filters, PLLs, signal conditioning and processing
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This message was ported from CCS's old forum
Original Post ID: 9290

[Hans Wedemeyer]

Well were do I begin.... All these projects have one or many more uP chips in them....
Industrial alarm system.

CAN to RS-232 modules... (soon to be published)

High Frequency Dielectric meter for bulk material.

Self training Light Switch (7 days of programming ).

One channel Ground Penetrating Radar Data System (USB based using 3 PIC18 and 1 PIC16).

Four Channel Ground Penetrating Radar Data System (using PCI card with PIC subsystem for DRI and GPS).

Radiation Spectrum Analzyer(now used by Home Land Security, email me I'll send you a link).

Four Channel DRO for Mill (5 PIC's)

RPM Meter for Mill and Lath use.

24 Channel NDT Flux Leakage System (many PIC chips)

Stepper Motor Controller.

Super low capacity change measurement system for evaluating air in fuel, able to measure less than 1000th of a pico-Farad consistently.

Bell Gravity Meter Interface.

24 cell Lithium Battery Manager.

Precision Platinum Temperature measuring unit.

DC Fan motor speed controller (for my mom) !

Seven port RS-232 Multiplexer (8 Pic's)

Fuel Filter controller.

Infrared Coupled foot pedal for Mouse button input.

Infrared Proximity Sensor Controlled Mouse...

Seven port Software Controlled RS-232 Switch.

Eight channel Serial (RS-232)12 bit ADC Module.

One channel 24 bit ADC, 1-Wire system USB connected to PC.

Eight channel Cholestrol Meter interface (RS-232 at TTL level)

VHF transceiver front panel controller.

Above Ground Marker System for Pipeline industry, now cloned by one and all in the industry. Best Complement to be copied by one's peers.

High Speed Cable Varification System.

4" Pipeline Pig main control system.

And when I get time.... h'mm h'mmm I'll add my humidity meter to this project list.... Chilled mirror and wet/dry bulb with real time psycrometric chart.

I'm sure I've forgotten something.. !
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This message was ported from CCS's old forum
Original Post ID: 9300

[Sergio]

A PIC device to recognize fake diamonds.
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This message was ported from CCS's old forum
Original Post ID: 9308

[Lance Lascari]

Wow, got some cool stuff here.

I'm mostly a hobbyist, but I do consulting as well. My specialty & day job is RF/microwave design, but I want to get back into doing more embedded stuff. My interest in PIC's was increased with the new 8-pin flash jobbies. Looking to use these for supporting RF hardware (power control loops, loading PLL synthesizers, etc).

Having worked with a number of micros & DSPs in the past for communications and instrumentation applications, PIC's are very appealing because of the wide variety of sizes, most all at reasonable prices with widespread acceptance (and perhaps less risk of obsolesence?). It seems nice to be able to pick a processor family and move around in the family rather than having to jump ship for different applications.

I used to be a hardcore assembly guy, but with less time to spend, I think C is the way to go. I've been able to easily reuse code I wrote five years ago and focus on the new problem trying to be solved, not all the nuances of just being on a new processor!

On previous processors I've done a number of things along the lines of what I hope to do with PICs.

-resistance (spot) welding current meter prototype (320 dsp +HC11)
-test waveform generator for above (hc11)
-handheld rs-485 machine controller prototype (hc11)
-numerous beacon controllers (hc11, hc705, for ham use)
-ham repeater controller (hc11)
-flash bootloader (PC app and progamming kernel in HC11 for external AMD flash)
-force-torque sensor serial interface (PC and 8051) for university research project
-simple PLL synthesizer loader(s) (hc11)
-selectable dsp audio filter with integrated iambic memory keyer (based on company hardware design for a data radio, hc11/56k dsp)
-user interface and signal processing stuff for converting my company's data radio into a "feature rich" ham voice radio (Hc11, 56303 dsp)


Lance


:=Please don't mind the offtopic post here, but i've been watching these forums for a while and well, we're always talking about PICs and programming them with the CCS compilers, which is fine.
:=
:=But my thirst for knowledge and my never satisfied curiosity is piqued. What are you guys working on? If that's not a trade secret, or without the greater details, what type of thing are you building?
:=
:=I've seen Sherpa Doug talk about someone else's marine sensors devices.
:=
:=I for myself am making interfaces between money-handling and money-recognizing machines.
:=
:=Oh my oh my am I curious <img src="http://www.ccsinfo.com/pix/forum/smile.gif" border="0">
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This message was ported from CCS's old forum
Original Post ID: 9312

[Freud]

Hi,

I used PIC in several projects like a MP3 player based on a PIC18F452 (www.imap.mp3.ms in French), timers, small robots, etc...I'm an electronic student (soon engineer) who would like to be proficient at everything from C/C++ to solder:-) Very ambitious, I know, but hey, I'm allowed to dream :)

Regards,
David


:=Sometimes I think I am like the "actor" that actually earns a living waiting on tables...
:=
:=I like to think I am the engineer for the navigation system of the LampRay inspection robot that crawls on the bottom of ship hulls measuring steel thickness, paint thickness, looking for cracks, warps, etc. See www.imetrix.com for more general info.
:=
:=Unfortunately we have found over the last few years that no one is willing to pay money to find out if their ship is about to fall apart like the Prestige receintly off the coast of Spain, the Erica earlier, and hundreds of other ships over history.
:=
:=So for the past few months I have been paying the bills by working as a consultant for another local oceanographic company (Cape Cod is full of them) writing code for some sensors, designing some PC boards, doing daily battles with their Byzantine stock and parts numbering system, and generally trying to stop them from tripping over their own ISO9000 corperate [spam].
:=
:=In need of some Christmas Spirit
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This message was ported from CCS's old forum
Original Post ID: 9315

[Sherpa Doug]

:=Hi,
:=
:=I used PIC in several projects like a MP3 player based on a PIC18F452 (www.imap.mp3.ms in French), timers, small robots, etc...I'm an electronic student (soon engineer) who would like to be proficient at everything from C/C++ to solder:-) Very ambitious, I know, but hey, I'm allowed to dream <img src="http://www.ccsinfo.com/pix/forum/smile.gif" border="0">
:=
:=Regards,
:=David
:=
:=

As long as it is fun, KEEP LEARNING! If you get good at everything from C/C++ to solder you will be very valuable, especially to small companies or if you choose to be self employed. If you become absolute master of ASIC optimization you will spend your life in a cubicle.

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This message was ported from CCS's old forum
Original Post ID: 9321

[Dave Yeatman]

I work for the government and I am currently working on a custom controller for a training system. Prior to this other PIC projects I have built:
- Home automation system PIC controller based nodes (7 different types)
- a weather station
- a WWV time sync generator
- several other specialized controllers for custom applications
- 11-12 misc other small projects

I have used the 16F84, 16C73, several 16F87x series, 16F628 and now the 18F4xx chips.
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This message was ported from CCS's old forum
Original Post ID: 9326

[neil]

Hi Doug, just thought I would tell you a bit about myself after reading the posts about what we all do for a living. It's interesting to know who is out there!

I work on a government funded particle accelerator in Oxfordshire, UK. I am one of about 90 'design engineers' who try to keep the thing ticking. I graduated earlier this year from university with a masters in Electrical & Electronic engineering, although I have worked at the same place part time for 3 years. I originally hoped to specialize in power electronics, or analog design, but most of what I do is digital now!

I introduced PICs to the workplace, after having to teach myself a bit about them for a university project (which never really worked!) Since then, I discovered CCS and unfortunately never looked back to asm! This causes many problems, as the CCS compiler has so many bugs which come and go with each edition.

I have been tearing my hair out all day today trying to work out why my LCD is displaying garbage (not initializing properly) when it was working before, and to my knowledge I didn't change any of the code! I started commenting out pieces, bit by bit until it worked, but could not narrow the problem down to a particular function. It was looking like the 16F874 I am using was out of RAM, without the compiler noticing (ROM was at 86\%, RAM ~70\%).
Finally, I uninstalled CCS v3.127 and 'rolled back' to v3.124 and it worked as before! Good old CCS, or my messy code?!

Anyway, what inspired me to write was that message you replied to about the student wishing to be good with C and with solder... My job requires this, as we design, build, commission and maintain all our own work. that is what I love about this job, although it is not well paid, and it is easy to get stuck in a rut. I have had an electronics background all my life and it is both hobby AND job (which has its drawbacks!)
My Father was a marine electrician/engineer on ESSO tankers, but has recently retired.

That's a quick insight into what I do anyway. I hope I haven't bored you too much!

All the best,
Neil.
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This message was ported from CCS's old forum
Original Post ID: 9443

[hobiadami]

hey thats a nice poll

for work i'm designing a fleet tracking system's ABS plastic case by using the rhinoceros3D program and giving support for the electronical design division in my freetime.

I've worked on the VS1033 mp3 chip for the voice messaging system of the product and it went good, the chip runs without problems. we also use its microphone preamplifier for sound recognition etc.

though we use ARM7 based NXP 2468 we need to deal with a thousand hardware problems and try to solve them with minimum support becoz in arms world, nearly nothing is free.

I've worked on the In application programming part of the project and so far didn'T be able to complete it, there is no working sample code around and all i have to do is read the 800 pages manual and work it out somehow.

An other part of the project i need to deal with is the MCI port, SD card support and FAT system in the future. A silicon errata delayed me a month which wasn't reported on the errata documents and after that i've quit working on the MCI port but somehow will need to return that.

Its boring.

At night i'm working on my phd thesis on usage of metaphors in industrial design of electronic products. In my freetime at work I'm working on a cyclocomputer with graphical LCD (128x64), SD card support etc. I'm using PIC 18F458 for the cyclocomputer. I think a PIC should have been our decision for the project at work instead of the ARM but unfortunately the decision is made before i started working here. With the readily available peripheral drivers and example code of CCS plus this forum where it is impossible to find any answer to any question which i might ever have a chance to ask.

CCS is absolutely great. And this forum too. Thanks guys.

[n-squared]

Hi

I am a Consultant in real-time and industrial control systems.
I do Hardware/firmware development for electronics companies.
Some of the products I have developed over the years:
• Hydraulic automatic transmission control system for private cars
• Fire and burglar alarm control panels
• Automatic sniper and tank target practice systems
• Access control systems (hotel locks and institutional systems)
• RFID proximity readers
• Meteorological balloon tracking software
• Telephone exchange control
• Laser based diamond cutting controls
• Gas detection systems
• High throughput automated unit handling system (automated physical item storage)
• High speed BLDC motor control
• Wireless communication transceivers

I have been using PIC MCU's since 1996, with the CCS PICC since version 2.

Cheers,
Noam