4. Velleman experiment boards K8055 and K8055N upgrade projects

PIC18F2xJ50 family has in fact 16 A/D input sources connected to the A/D converter via multiplexer. PIC18F2xJ50 supports up to 10 external analog inputs. Whereas, internal inputs 14 and 15 are used to measure two important internal power supply voltages: Vddcore and Vref. Vddcore is microcontroller core voltage that is around 2.5 V. The refference voltage is always 1.2 V and it is mainly used for calibration. If you read this channel, you should always get a value close to 372. The internal voltage levels may also be used to check the current operating conditions of the microcontroller, if power source is unreliable or unstable.

K8055 and K8055N boards offer many ways for modifications. It is not a necessity to use USB address selection jumpers. You may remove them and use RA2 input as third A/D input under condition that you add appropriate electronics (at least the voltage level adaptor, if you deal with the voltage range outside 0 .. 3.3 V).

There are also other possibilities for modifications.

Archive of Velleman originally programmed microcontrollers... You probably won't need them anymore...

There is absolutely no reason why you wouldn’t use the whole range of A/D converter inputs on the PIC18F24J50 that gets shipped with the original K8055N board. It is easy to program, but if you still want to keep the Velleman’s firmware then you might want to buy a new chip (WHERE TO BUY PARTS?). I have managed to program a new firmware into PIC18F24J50 and PIC18F26J50 and I wrote a new windows application and a DLL based on Microchip USB framework and C18 compiler. Now, I can get even more than two 10-bit A/D channels and I can arrange digital and analog inputs and outputs on PIC18F24J50 as I desire. There si also PIC18F26J50 that costs a few cents more, but it has 64 kB of flash RAM (EEPROM) instead of only 16 kB. If you are buying a new chip, go for PIC18F26J50. The other features of PIC18F26J50 are the same as PIC18F24J50.

Projects:

@. How to replace K8055D.DLL and keep existing programming?

@@. Full 32-bit and 64-bit DLL support for original Vellaman K8055 and K8055N firmware

a. A simple PIC18F24J50 firmware upgrade adds many new functionalities like 10-bit A/D conversion and additional analog input channels

b. Turn K8055 or K8055N into a microcontroller programmer

c. K8055 upgrade from PIC16F745 to PIC18F24J50 or PIC18F26J50

d. How to replace PIC18F24J50 with PIC18F26J50

e. How many K8055 and K8055N boards can I connect to a PC?

f. Can I remotely control K8055 or K8055N compatible board through internet or intranet?

g. Do K8055 and K8055N boards run at 16 MHz?

h. It is really easy to add an illumination sensor to K8055 or K8055N board!

i. Connecting temperature sensors to K8055 and K8055N boards