How do I program a pic to accept inputs?

[timbear3]

Hi, thank you Electromark for your time and your answer. I probably did not explain my self clear enough. I apology my English is not the best, it's my second language. Anyway, let me put it this way: you buy let say a coffee maker. First time you use it you must key in the time; when you want it to star brewing the coffee every morning; how do you like the coffee, light or bold and few other things. All of these instructions I supposed goes into the data eeprom or somewhere like that and the processor read these instructions and follow these every day until they are changed. I understand I'll need some extra electronics to do the job but that is part of learning this process. Only I need is someone that had that experience and lead me to books or places or his own knowledge on how to be able to accomplish this. Thanks a lot.

[mackrackit]

Seems like you just answered your own question... Do you need help with reading and writing to the EEPROM?

[timbear3]

Ok, that's a good start point! But any where to go on line? Any good book, Any program that does something alike. Thanks.

[mackrackit]

This page has links to examples for using the internal EEPROM and for using an external via I2C.
Depending on the amount of data you need to store and the frequency will probably determine if you use an internal or external solution.

I will suggest starting with the internal for practice.
http://melabs.com/samples/PBP-mixed/ee.htm
and
http://melabs.com/samples/PBP-mixed/eeword.htm

Once the examples are working then add an input button. Try increasing the data stored at a location by 1 every time the button is pressed.

[timbear3]

Thank you Mackrackit, now I can get the taste of it. I also have found some other examples and I think that that's the way to go. I'll report back. Thanks to all of you!

[Archangel]

I would ask you what your expectations are for your controller to do. Do you want it to interpret G code, or do you only expect it to act as a stepper motor controller/interpreter under the control of Mach III or similar?

[timbear3]

No, I think that once I have the control program burned on the Pic it will control the projector and the stepper motor with pulses from within. The projector will need a digital pulse to advance the slide show for a number of milliseconds and the controller will count the slides to 0 and stop. The stepper motor will control the thickness of every slice and keep the resin in motion. I wanted to write the initial numbers at the eeprom en case the power is lost the program will read the number of slices and subtract a unit every time it read it and remember the thickness also. One print will take hours to make and you don't want to trash an almost finished part because of power failure. The program will have that contingency on it. I think the rest will be very easy once I finished the programming and test it for bugs. Thanks