Newbie to pic but not electronics

[Techbuilder]

I have done the blinking led and I own picbasic pro that I got from microengineering labs. My programmer I bought from ebay and I do not remember what errors I got since it has been months since I tried it.

How do you know rentron didn't just put it on with out trying the firmware out?

Who knows

But anyway I don't get how reading the inputs work yet.


Let's start simple say I wanted two leds to chase eachother

I connect led 1 to RB0and led 2 to RB1

and I guess I would connect the switch to RB2

but would I have to read RB2 Input
then send and output to RB0 and RB1 when RB2 makes contact?

The PIC I am using is a 16F84A

[skimask]

How do you know rentron didn't just put it on with out trying the firmware out?

And throw ANY credibility out the window? I don't think so... Besides, I've seen their work, I've used their products and software. Good stuff...

But anyway I don't get how reading the inputs work yet.
Let's start simple say I wanted two leds to chase eachother
I connect led 1 to RB0and led 2 to RB1
and I guess I would connect the switch to RB2
but would I have to read RB2 Input
then send and output to RB0 and RB1 when RB2 makes contact?
The PIC I am using is a 16F84A

Good example of how to use a button and the BUTTON command in Section 5.2 of the PBP manual. But that's probably too much for your example...
To read a pin, you have to set it to an input (as the datasheet states), you may also need a variable to store the state of that pin so you can work with it elsewhere.

input_pin var portb.2
input input_pin
temp var byte
temp = input_pin

Now "temp" has the state of PortB.2.
Again, break it down to the simplest possible level...
Write a program that reads the portb.2, and have the LED on portb.0 light up if the button on portb.2 is pressed, and the LED on portb.1 light if the button is released.

[Techbuilder]

Ohh I get it that makes perfect sense

So all I would have to do is read the input

but say when I pressed the button I want the RB0 led to flash 4 times and RB1 led to flash 8 times when I press the button once.

How would that work?

[ALFRED]

Do you mean how would you have the different LEDs flash a different number of times depending on how many times you push the button? This could be accomplished by waiting for the input pin to go high then adding 1 to a pre-defined variable. You would then wait for the input pin to go low before monitoring the input for a high signal. After a pre-defined amount of time waiting for the high signal, the number of button pushes would be stored in the variable that holds the count.

[skimask]

Ohh I get it that makes perfect sense

So all I would have to do is read the input

but say when I pressed the button I want the RB0 led to flash 4 times and RB1 led to flash 8 times when I press the button once.

How would that work?

For/Next.....If/Then.....counters in a loop....thousand different ways of doing it.
Write some code, we'll dig thru it all...

[sougata]

Hi,

While PicBasic makes your life real easy I still recommend to study the internals of the PIC micro to get the most out of PBP. To get started try the link here http://techtrain.microchip.com/x14/ and view or download the flash based presentation. IMO it accelerates learning the PIC....

[Techbuilder]

Thank you very much everyone has been helpful

Although I was reading on the button command wouldn't that be the easiest way to go?

[skimask]

Although I was reading on the button command wouldn't that be the easiest way to go?

Not if you're just reading a single switch on a single port performing a single function...
Now if you're looking for functionality like auto-repeat, debouncing, sure, button may be the way to go.