PIC 16F88 Digital Thermometer Light Meter and resistance ohm meter.

My original idea for this project was simply to try and interface the WINTEK WD-C2401P lcd panel to the pic (see my previous post). I figured it would be fun to add a couple of ADC readings to display something useful on the lcd. 


Theory of Operation:


PORTB on the PIC is used as the data port for the LCD. The Enable, Register Select and Reset are tied to PORTA. Once the LCD is initialized, the PIC reads the ADC values from the thermistor, CDS cell and resistor (if connected) via a voltage divider. The voltage divider translates any change in resistance from the sensors into changes in voltage. The Vout is calculated as 
Vdd*(R2/R2+R1). ) So any change in R1 (the sensor's resistance) will result in a change in the output voltage. In order to translate this into the ADC value, a 10 bit ADC resolution microcontroller will have 1024 (2 to the power of 10) possible steps. So if the controller is operating on 5V then each step will increment the voltage by 5/1024 = 0.004882813V every increment. So the value in the ADC will be the voltage input at the ADC divided by 0.004882813. This allows for an accurate calculation of the resistance of the sensor. In order to translate the resistance to useful human readable form, its necessary to calibrate the sensors using real life instruments and extrapolating the values to the resistance offered. Since the display does not have any backlight, an LED is connected to PORTA4 to turn on whenever the light falls below a certain threshold. 


Parts:
PIC 16F88
78L05 Voltage regulator
C1 - 1uf capacitor
R1,R3,R4 - 10K Ohm
R2 - 1K Ohm
R5 - 120 Ohm
LED
Thermistor
CDS Cell
Wintek WD-C2401P LCD display


Circuit Diagram:

Designed by Mindfront Technologies for    

The complete kit is available at www.chaneyelectroincs.com