On Sun, Apr 18, 2004 at 05:39:16PM +0100, Matt Marsh wrote:
> On Sunday 18 April 2004 15:42, Byron A Jeff wrote:
> > On Sun, Apr 18, 2004 at 02:34:08PM +0100, Matt Marsh wrote:
> > > On Saturday 17 April 2004 21:49, Byron A Jeff wrote:
> > > > So now onto how to get it done. If you have a CCP
> > > > (Capture/Compare/PWM) module it's your bestest friend for
> > > > such a project. It'll measure the pulse widths for you, give
> > > > you an interrupt when it's done capturing, and has
> > > > programmable polarity and counting speed. It's literally set
> > > > and forget.
> > >
> > > So, having had a couple of responses saying that CCP would be
> > > useful for this, I thought I'd better do a bit of research into
> > > CCP (given that I hadn't heard of it before). It certainly
> > > looks interesting, although from Microchip's website I can only
> > > see it available on some of the 18F* chips? Is that correct?
> >
> > Nope. Not even close. From a cursory look, the smallest cheapest
> > chips with it is the 16F818 with a Digikey single chip price of
> > $3.25 and the 16F628A weighing in at $3.05. That's about double
> > the price of the 12F629. OTOH you do get more pins, more memory,
> > and more peripherals to play with (like a hardware UART if you
> > happen to need it).
>
> Ah, you're totally right, my searching of Microchip's website was
> obviously far from effective. Now that I've gone back there and
> looked again I can see that there are several that I missed the
> first time. I also notice a new 8-pin chip which claims to have CCP
> which is the 12F683 and looks right up my street. However, it was
> due for release just 2 days ago and I can't yet see it listed on
> their samples section or at any suppliers yet.

Typical.

>
> Are Microchip usually on-time with when they say that something is
> going to be released?

No. Quick example: dsPICs were announced over 3 years ago. It's still not
available in anything other than engineering examples at this point.

> And do they normally have samples available soon after release?

Don't count on it. With Mchip it's always best to use something in wide scale
production. You can grow old waiting for them to release new stuff.

BAJ

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