I have constructed a 'magic wand'

which will display a message in mid air when waved in front of you.
The wand is not very easy to see in daylight, but many people can see it.
I have constructed this with little components so it is very cheap.

NOTE: MCLR Pin5 should be connected to +vdc (+5v DC)

The Hardware

I made my wand out of a maplin project box order no FT32J

This is a small probe box and cost approximately 1GBP.
I drilled 5 holes for the LED's and made a small PCB to fit inside.
The box is *Just* big enough to squeese a 9V battery in, which supplies the
PCB with the power.
The scrolling sensing is done by a tilt switch/ push button.
If a tilt switch is used, you will have to juggle with it for optimal
performance.
In place of the tilt switch, you could put a button mounted on the case, which
when pressed will triggger off the display.

The construction

The project is fairly simple, the only problem being that all of the circuit has
to cram into a relatively small box. Follow
the steps below, and the scroller will work.
Steps:
1) Get all of the components (see below)
2) Assemble the components on a PCB or Veroboard.
Use the circuit diagram to build it.
.... 2.1) Place the smallest pieces on the board first.
Do it in height order. i.e links first then resistors caps... Put the
programmed microchip in first.
.... 2.2) Program the microcontroller with the message.asm file.
.... 2.3) Place the programmed chip into the board.
The chip should be set to Watch Dog Timer off (WDT) and oscillator
mode RC.
You can download pictures of the Simple PIC programmer from my
web site (www.bazginge.demon.co.uk)
3) Drill all of the holes in the box.
The holes should be:
5x LED hole
1x button hole(optional)
1x off switch
4) Push the PCB into the box, with the LED's pushed into the holes drilled.
 Attach the PCB to the bottom of the box
with either tape/velcro or PCB spacers depending on the height of the
LEDS from the bottom of box.
5) Put battery in box making sure that it is held in tightly.
6) Put the top onto the box. Turn on and wave around

The components

Resistors
R1 100K Metal film 0.5%
R2 12K

Capacitors
C1 100n Ceramic cap
C2 100n Ceramic cap
C3 100uF Electrolytic
C4 10pF Ceramic cap

Semiconductors
IC1 PIC16C84 04 (4Mhz)
IC2 LM7805 voltage regulator

Misc
5x Red LED
1x push to make switch
1x toggle/slide switch

Software
The software is very simple indeed. the are mainly four parts to my code.

1) The declarations
2) The message to be scrolled
3) The letter output routines
4) The wait routine

Here is the code below.

assembler source message.asm
Hex File message.hex (default message hello)
message.zip a .zip file of the whole message project.

Barry's page used to be located at http://www.bazginge.demon.co.uk/ click

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