No problem using a PIC. You can do the firmware in assy, basic, or C and
meet your goals. Another option is a data logger or an acquisition board
with either labview or HP-VEE. 50hz update should be no problem for any of
these.

Larry


At 02:04 PM 8/13/03 +0100, you wrote:
>Hi All,
>
>I've been reading the list for a couple of weeks now, although I've not
>actually used a pic before.
>
>I'm a programmer really, but have a fair degree of electronics experience.
>
>I am doing some consultancy for a company at the moment. They have a need to
>measure displacement of a vehicle suspension, at bang on 50Hz. They have so
>far set up an elaborate system which moves a PC mouse, and tried to create
>windows software to read the mouse position 50 times per second. However,
>they've been having great difficulty in reading at that frequency, and in
>particular, reading without a fair degree of variance over the frequency.
>
>I have been hired to help them out. The main problem they're having is the
>way windows works. It's not a Real Time Operating system, and the internal
>clock pulse of the NT kernal has a period of 7.5ms, which makes it really
>hard to do anything in real time at a frequency whose period is not a
>multiple of that.
>
>I had considered that a solution to the problem might be to use a PIC. To
>replace the mouse as the displacement sensor with a simple rheostat device,
>through an op amp and into an ADC on a PIC. The pic could then send the
>sampled data down a serial port, to the PC, for storage and processing.
>
>My question to you is whether the PIC is suitable for this Real-time
>operation? Am I likely to be able to get a PIC to sample at 50Hz with a 1%
>error margin of frequency? Or should I be looking elsewhere for solutions?
>
>Thanks
>
>Jon
>
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Larry G. Nelson Sr.
mailto:L.Nelson@ieee.org
http://www.mchipguru.com

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