Breadboard Module Designed for PIC16F628A

This breadboard module is made to cater a PIC16F628A microcontroller for faster prototyping of circuits and avoid the initial microcontroller setup.

The module can be easily plugged into a breadboard and will not consume more space since the components are already built on the module such as the oscillator, reset and ICSP circuits. Male headers are used to access the power supply pins and the I/O ports of the PIC16F628A microcontroller. The microcontroller is running with an external 4MHz crystal which makes it different from the previous PIC16F688 breadboard module. The PORTB is 8-bit wide which allows read/write of 8-bit data directly. For experiments that require accurate timing calculations, this module is more appropriate. A general purpose prototyping board can be used to solder the circuit.

The circuit diagram and layout of the module includes an LED as power ON indicator, a reset switch, and ICSP header pins for in-circuit programming. This provides easy access to RA0 through RA4 pins of PORTA and to all the pins of PORTB. RA5 is used for reset circuit and is input only pin while for external crystal connections, pins RA6 and RA7 are used.

The anodes of the 8 LEDs are connected to the PORTB pins and the cathodes are grounded through 330 Ohms resistors in series. To chase the 8 LEDS that are connected to the PORTB pins of the PIV16F628A, a small application program has been written in C and complied with MikroC Proc for PIC.

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