Experiments with PIC16F628A

Digital thermometers are cool devices as they show temperatures in human readable formats. This digital thermometer project is based on a PIC16F688 microcontroller and a DS1820 temperature sensor, and it displays temperature on a character LCD screen in both Celsius and Fahrenheit scales. I selected PIC16F688 for this project because it is cheap (I bought one for $1.50). DS1820 is a 3-pin digital temperature sensor from Dallas semiconductors (now Maxim) which is designed to measure temperatures ranging from -55 to +125 °C in 0.5 °C increments. The firmware I have written is able to read and display the entire temperature range of DS1820. In order to test for temperature measurements below 0°C, I put the sensor inside my freezer. While trying this, don’t put the whole unit inside the freezer as LCD display unit may stop working at the freezer temperature. Similarly, bringing a soldering iron tip close to the sensor can do testing for the higher range temperature values.

In this experiment, we are going to build a digital temperature meter using DS1820 connected to our PIC16F628A development board. The temperature value will be displayed on the LCD display. I have modified the sample program that comes with the compiler according to our PIC board requirements. Also I have elaborated comments in the program so that every step will be more clear to the readers. Experimental Setup: The experimental setup is very straight-forward. Place DS1820 device on the three-pin female header that we recently added to our board. And also connect the data pin of DS1820 to RB.0 pin of PIC16F628A using a jumper wire.