1/4 time car meter without microprocessor?

[david90]

Is there an easy way to make a 1/4 time meter without resorting to microprocessor or controller? I'm still early on my studies on digital circuits.

 

[gam]

To do a timer using standard counters is a complex design, costly and will mostly not have any features.

I will suggest using a microcontroller especially since you are a begineer in digital, It is much easier to write and debug code than complex hardware, it is much cheaper, and more flexible: you can add lots of features to your timer only by software!

Some of the cheap and highly supported microcontrollers are: Microchip PIC and ATMEL AVR and the 8051/8052.

Regards,
Gam

 

[Igor_S]

Hi,
I assume that you need high resolution/precision, if you point to electronical way of time measuring - opposite you can use mechanical / electromechanical / chemistry ways, not speakins about old good sand clock ). Thus, you obviously have to use the oscillator - counter - display system. On this way, you can only use or discrete components, or controller (processor), or FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array). The drawback of last two options is that you have to use some software tools in order to write your code - but it is much easier and flexible than discrete components mounting.

 

[david90]

so how would I go about doing this project using a PIC? How do some microcontroller can measure acceleration without communicating with some kind of external device?