When&What to use...!!! simple questions?!

[Dwayne]

Hello Alan,

Alan>>I know I am having noise problems cause when my motor initially starts, its put reverb back into my whole design but maybe after 1 sec it goes down and it works. This is why I want to somehow isolate the motor ground from the rest of my design to help "clean up" the remaining part.<<

Put 2 diodes opposing across the Positive and negative of the motor... That will quite the noise down considerably. The diodes will help take care of the "spikes" and noise of the motor. If you are using a Mosfet, it will greatly reduce the heat/power needed by the Mosfet.

Dwayne

[BigWumpus]

Using the max232 is a simple and safe way to convert the signals out of the pic into RS-232-compatible signals (including inverter!). There is no MUST, but it is the most used way ...

I prefer to use the hardware-UART inside a PIC for receiving data, because it uses not so much CPU-time. You can receive fast messages at high baudrates. And setting up the sender in hardware is very easy....