ANALOG-TO-DIGITAL CONVERSION (ADC)
Analog-to-digital conversion (ADC) is necessary because, while embedded systems deal with digital values, their surroundings typically involve many analog signals such as, temperature, speed, pressure, the output of a microphone, etc. They all need to be converted into digital data before being processed by the microcontroller. Today, we will see how to read an external analog signal using a PIC16F877a microcontroller, and display the conversion output (a digital number) on a LCD. The input analog signal will be a varying voltage between 0-5V derived using a potentiometer. Microcontrollers have 5 inputs for 28 pin devices and 8 inputs for 40/44 pin devices. It is a 10-bit ADC, ie the conversion of analog signal results in corresponding 10-bit digital number. The positive and negative reference voltage (+Vref and -Vref) of PIC ADC is software selectable, which can be VDD, VSS, voltage at RA2 or RA3. This A/D Converter module can also operate in sleep mode in which clock is...