I found many questions from students of Electrical and electronics studying Microcontroller in electronics labs or in course related to microcontrollers. They often asked for adc interfacing with Pic16f877.  So i decided to write a page about Interfacing of analog to digital converter with PIC16f877 microcontroller.
An analog-to-digital converter (A/D) is used to convert an analog signal, such as
voltage, to digital form so a microcontroller can read and process it. Some
microcontrollers have built-in A/D converters. External A/D converter can also be connected to any type of microcontroller. A/D converters are usually 8 to 10 bits, having 256 to 1024 quantization levels. Most PIC microcontrollers with A/D features have multiplexed A/D converters which provide more than one analog input channel.
For example, the PIC18F452 microcontroller and PIC16f877 have 10-bit 8-channel A/D converters. The A/D conversion process must be started by the user program and may take several hundred microseconds to complete. A/D converters usually generate interrupts when a conversion is complete so the user program can read the converted data quickly.
A/D converters are especially useful in control and monitoring applications, since most sensors (e.g., temperature sensors, pressure sensors, force sensors, etc.) produce analog output voltages.
First of all if we have checked the data sheet of the microcontroller PIC 16f877. Then we will come to know that it have builtin Analog to digital converter. The microcontroller PIC16f877 have built in adcs. what we need is carefull configuration of the special purpose registers associated with ADC in PIC16f877. Best practice is to start using analog to digital converter from AN0 to onword. becuase if you will start from AN4 or AN5 then you will notic that there are some analog channel which have to configure them as spare channel. At first it appears that the PIC16F877 has 8 built-in ADCs, but this is not the case. The input analogue channels AN4..0 are shared with port A, and channels AN7..5 are shard with port E. If less than eight analogue channels are required then some of the pins can be assigned as digital I/O port lines using PCFG3..0 bits (see datasheet). For example, if PCFG3..0 = 0010 then AN4..0 are configured as analogue inputs, while AN7..5 are digital (port E free), with VDD used as the reference.Any how, I suggest my students, to use builtin ADC of the PIC 16f877 for any general purpose expierement. As they have good enough resolution and in the most of the assignments they have good performance. The typical resolution of the ADC built in PIC 16f1877 are 10bits, i.e you can have 5000(mV)/1024 = 4.88 mV/bit. It is fine for some cases. When you need some higher resolution then you can attach 12bit or 14, 16 bit ADC with PIC16f877 very easily. In the coming post we will learn how to interface 12-bit ADC with Microcontroller PIC16f877.There are many
analog-to-digital converter chips available on the market, and an embedded systems designer should understand the characteristics of such chips so they can be used efficiently. As far as the input and output voltage are concerned A/D converters can be classified as either unipolar and bipolar. Unipolar ADC accept unipolar input voltages in the range 0 to þ0V, and bipolar ADC accept bipolar input voltages in the
range V. Bipolar converters are frequently used in signal processing applications, where the signals by nature are bipolar. Unipolar converters are usually cheaper, and they are used in many control and instrumentation applications. The typical steps involved in reading and converting an analog signal into digital form, a process also known as signal conditioning. Signals received from sensors usually need to be processed before being fed to an ADC. The processing usually begins with scaling the signal to the correct value. Unwanted signal components are then removed by filtering the signal using classical filters (e.g., a lowpass filter). Finally, before feeding the signal to an ADC, the signal is passed through a sample-and-hold device. This is particularly important with fast real-time signals whose value may be changing between the sampling instants. A sample-andhold device ensures that the signal stays at a constant value during the actual conversion
process. Many applications required more than one ADC, which normally involves using an analog multiplexer at the input of the ADC. The multiplexer selects only one signal at any time and presents this signal to the ADC. An ADC usually has a single analog input and a digital parallel output.
The most practical method of reading Analog signal is by using an ADC built into a PICmicro® MCU. The ADC read can be carried out in the following macro:
ADCRead Macro
bsf ADCON0, GO ; Turn on the ADC
btfsc ADCON0, GO ; Wait for it to Complete
goto $ – 1
endm
Method to use Built in ADC of PIC16f877 in MicroC C language:
void main()
{
ADCON1 = 0×00 ; // set PORTA as analog input
TRISA = 0xff ; // set PORTA as inputs
while (1)
{
temp = Adc_Read(0);
}
}
In the above example single channel ADC is used , however you can use upto eight ADC by selecting one by one. the analog voltage from PORTA channel 0. The analog voltage is supplied by a potentiometer. As you change the variable resistance the voltage that is applied to PORTA channel 0 will change. The ADC module of the PIC16F877 will convert the input voltage to an integer number between 0 and 1024. Notice that the ADC module of the PIC 16F877 is a 10-bit module, so the there are 1024 binary number to represent the input voltage range.The output of ADC module is a 10-bit binary number.
The Microcontroller PIC16F873A has 5 10-bit ADC channels,16F874A has 8 10-bit ADC channels,16F876A has 5 10-bit ADC channels,16F877A has 8 10-bit ADC channels.
reflectance sensor with PIC16F877 solar panel voltage by using PIC16F877 microcontroller. Microcontroller-based converter is chosen because it permits easy system modifications.