PIC 16F876A
The PIC 16F876A Processor is a cut down version of the 16F877A. It is available packaged in 28pin dip format.
The PIC 16F87x range provide:-
- 3 or 5 I/O ports
- 4k or 8k of Program Memory
- 192 or 368 Bytes of RAM
- 128 or 256 bytes of EEPROM
- Serial Port
- I2C PORT 16F87(6/7) may be Master or Slave
- 5 or 8 Analog inputs
- 3 Timers
The 16f87x range been superceded by newer models with features such as onboard USB.
The 16F876a and the larger 16F877a however can still be found quite cheaply (ebay etc.) and there are a large number of web pages with hardware and software examples.
They can be programed using high level languages such as Basic and C, however the JAL language is available freely and includes instructions for handling the builtin functions of a wide range of PIC processors.
A good introduction to the various ports and functions available in the 16F87x range - as well as the JAL language - is the Book “PIC Microcontrollers : 50 Projects for Beginners and Experts” by Bert van Dam.
Wouter van Ooijen, Author of the original JAL(v1) language has a site full of PIC and JAL info at http://www.voti.nl/jal/index.html especially useful for someone just starting out are the ‘blink a led’ hex files for a complete range of PIC processors that can be flashed to a processor to test a basic hardware and programmer setup without first having to understand a language or compiler tools etc.
http://www.sirbot.org “The SirBot Project provides an easy way to build, program, control, and monitor amateur robots”, is GPL, uses a PIC 16F88 and the JAL language. The project blog is where I found the I2C slave software that can be compiled for th 16F876, The source for this and changes needed to get it working on the 16F87x processor extending the I/O capabilities of the Router are covered in the 16F876 i2c page with the kind permission of Sébastien LELONG, the sirbot project’s author.