This is my first ever post on the Matrix forums and I’m hoping that someone can offer some help and advice on a little project I’m working on.
Firstly a little about me. I’m no programmer (hence my interest in Flowcode), and I’m also no electronics guru, more of a general designer/engineer with some very simple scripting knowledge, and some basic electronics knowledge going back to the 80s!
Secondly, I’m presently using an unlocked demo version of Flowcode 7, so up against the clock to see if I can get what I need to work, before I commit my hard earned to the full version with a Pic pack, as I will need the software commercially going forward to generate different variations.
My project I’m thinking should be basic stuff as all I’m looking to do is control five LEDs in different fixed (defined by the code) looping combinations, and I need to use the smallest and cheapest Pic to do the job, and the smallest amount of supporting components to keep the PCB very small.
Presently I’m using a 12f675 with a Pickit3 programmer and I can get most of everything to work perfectly both in Flowcode, and on the real circuit so when power is applied, the LED pattern runs and loops for a number of times to give a duration of 10-15 seconds then stop. The final part of the puzzle was to add a PTM switch to trigger the program, and this is where I have hit a wall…!!
Digging around on the net I find many 12f675 projects that use both LED sequences and a PTM trigger switches, so I’m convinced the little chip can do what I need however, any example code is either .hex so pointless to analyse, or .asm which for me is incomprehensible
![Confused :?](./images/smilies/icon_confused.gif)
The only tutorials I can find that are switch/LED and Flowcode related use other larger microcontrollers, and also use different ports (PORTA for the switch & PORTB for the LED’s), and it seems that in Flowcode 7, PORTA is the only option for the 12f675.
My suspicions are that maybe the 12f675 is not suitable for the task as I did have a 16f676 in my pot (although it’s too big for my needs package wise) and gave it a go, but whilst it did give me both PORTA and PORTC options and I could get it to work in Flowcode, I couldn’t get it to work for real using the same circuit as the 675.
Any advice/pointers on chips, programming etc. would be greatly appreciated, and if you need me to upload any projects and/or circuit diagrams, please let me know. Many thanks in advance.