TESTING PIC MICROCONTROLLER
After finished soldering all the components to the PIC board,
now we were ready to testing our project whether the circuit might be function
or otherwise. There were a few ways to do the inspection work for example by using
multimeter, vibrate sensor, and LCD display.
MULTIMETER
Multimeters are a very useful tool for diagnosing problems with electrical systems so this equipment was very useful to us in order to testing the continuity of between component at PIC board. One of the most basic uses of a multimeter is to test for continuity. Testing for continuity basically means testing to see if there is an electric connection between two points. If two points are electrically connected they are said to be continuous.
Before we test for an electric connection we must
do a few things first we make sure our multimeter is working. We
can test this by brushing the two tips together and verifying that we hear a
beep. The manual we received with our multimeter may have more information on
testing our multimeter and make sure the device or system we are testing is
powered off. If there is already voltage in the circuit we will not get
accurate readings.
Continuity
testing can help us test our soldered connections to see if they were soldered
correctly. A beginner just like us who is not experienced in visually detecting
problems with a soldered joint can get frustrated very easily because a joint
can look like its soldered correctly but there may be no electric connection.
Using a
multimeter can
quickly help us find out if the soldered connection is good or not. This
test can also help us determine if a wire is broken in the middle.
One of us
recently had a problem with a pw led. By testing with a multimeter, we could
see that there was no electrical current flowing between the pw led connection
and this told us that the pw led was not soldered properly. Another basic use
for continuity testing is to test if a short circuit has been created. We can
use the multimeter to confirm that two points are not electrically connected
and that a short circuit does not exist.
VIBRATION SENSOR
For testing our PIC Microcontroller
Project functioning well or not we also used vibration sensor. This sensor acts
as input signal so when this sensor interfacing any vibration surrounding, it
will detect and send the input signal to the PIC. Before we tested our project
actually we already programmed the instruction for PIC by using PIC C Compiler
V4.038 software whereby when PIC receive any signal from vibration sensor it
will execute and told the LED to be blinked as a result. For this testing we
just need to shake the vibrate sensor if the LED blink so our circuit was
functioning well.
LCD DISPLAY
We also used Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) that have been
programmed by PIC C Compiler V4.038 to display “Hello World” when we running
the circuit. LCD
(Liquid Crystal Display) screen is an electronic display module and find a wide
range of applications. A 16x2 LCD display is very basic module and is very
commonly used in various devices and circuits. These modules are preferred over seven segments and other multi segment LEDs.
The
reasons because LCDs are economical, easily programmable and have no limitation
of displaying. A 16x2 LCD means it
can display 16 characters per line and there are 2 such lines. In this LCD each
character is displayed in 5x7 pixel matrix. This LCD has two registers, namely,
Command and Data. The command register stores the command instructions given to
the LCD. A command is an instruction given to LCD to do a predefined task like
initializing it, clearing its screen, setting the cursor position, controlling
display etc. The data register stores the data to be displayed on the LCD. The
data is the ASCII value of the character to be displayed on the LCD.
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