MicroCode Studio VS Mplab

[Bruce]

In my opinion, MPLAB wins hands-down.

[tonyfelloni]

lol, see what I mean about it being a mine field for beginners... so many options and so many viewpoints.

It all helps though!

I'm currently trashing out the details of my final college project next year. It's basically a souped up incubator for reptiles (Kinda like pimp my incubator!) I want it to have an interface to the web so that i could go to a web address and this page would be updated with variables like the temp, humidity and possibly a still image updated once a day.

Any ideas if this side of things would be difficult to achieve? I have tonnes of time to do some research I just need to know where to start! I need to achieve all this with mostly self constructed circuits rather than pre-build modules.

Tony

[mister_e]

Not that hard if you understand the concept and how to do some web programming. Nice project... maybe a bit ambitious for a first one though. Depending how fast you catch things, how many time/hours you want to spend on, i would say it's a go... but be ready to work hard.

At least you still have ~1 year to do so

[tonyfelloni]

I will do a lot of research over this summer so I can be ready to start into it in september. I have just finished building a nixie clock on a breadboard and have it running perfectly multiplexing all the digits, I wrote most of the code and modified the timing element using Roman Blacks 1s timer. I think this was a good first PBP project, I learned a good deal.

I think my main issue with the incubator project will be the webpage side of things, I understand this needs to be stored on the PIC but I havent the first idea how to consturct a web page in code. I do know the data it has to display is very simple so hopefully it wont be too bad.

I just bought micro electronica's pic5 board and the ethernet controller. Do you know if practicing on the ethernet controller would be leading me in the right direction? Not sure if it si possible to simulate what I need using these tools.

Also using a mini webserver like this is it just possible to plug in into my router and away it goes without the need for a PC or laptop to be permanently on?

Elektor recently did a digibutler device for home automation which is very close to what i need.

Tony

[mister_e]

Tons of possibilities. Microchip have some framework in C to play with.

Lantronix, Charron & Rabbit's modules worth a look. Way much simple to implement and you don't need to care about the TCP/IP stack.

I also have the MikroE Ethernet board.... i just never played with it yet.

[eggman]

I just did a project with a SitePlayer module, they are very easy to use and very cheap. You can easily communicate with a PIC with the serial port.