Hi All,

I'm just getting started PIC programming.  I'm pretty
comfortable with programming but my hardware experience is
very limited.  I'm reading as much as I can but thought
I'd solicit some advice from the list, so here goes:

My application will incorporate input from the user in the
form of button presses or IrDA communication.  It (the
PIC) will also be talking to a realtime clock, RAM and one
or more serial peripherals.  It will provide output to the
user in the form of flashes of one or more LEDs.

During all of this, the program needs to remain responsive
to both the user's button presses and to anything coming
in from the various peripherals.

I don't want my program locked up in tight delay loops
during things like flashing an LED - if that will affect
its responsiveness to input.

How do most of you deal with issues like this?

Should I incorporate a cheap 2nd PIC and use a few IO pins
to tell it what to present to the user?  For example, 000
= do nothing, 001 = single red flash, 010 = two red
flashes, etc...  This would give me eight different output
options and my "primary" PIC could treat it as a 'one
shot' kind of deal - set the bits and forget about it.

Am I on a decent track here - or are there better (or
cheaper) options?

Also - do any of you know of an IC that will do both of
the following:  (1) Multiplex serial devices so I can use
the PICs single UART to communicate with multiple devices,
and (2) Buffer incoming data so I can check it at my
liesure?

Thanks for your time!

Matt Redmond

--
http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different
ways.  See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details.