The Signal Analysis PICtail™ Daughter Board works as an extension to the PICkit™ 1 Flash Starter Kit. When combined with PICkit 1 firmware version 2.0.0 or later and the signal-analysis PC program, the Signal Analysis PICtail Daughter Board can perform signal-analysis capabilities such as: real-time strip chart, oscilloscope, Fast Fourier Transformation (FFT), histogram and programming.

The Signal Analysis PICtail Daughter Board comes populated with a PIC16F684 and two 25LC640 SPI™ compatible serial EEPROM memory devices.The PIC16F684 I/O pins RC0, RC1 and RC3 are connected directly to test point connections on the edge of the PCB. These can be configured as comparator analog inputs (RC0/AN4, RC1/AN5), analog-to-digital converter inputs (RC0/AN4, RC1/AN5, RC3/AN7) or as digital input/output pins. I/O pin RC5 is connected through a RC filter (R1 and C4) to a test point connection. RC5 is the P1A output of the Enhanced Capture/Compare/Pulse Width Modulation (ECCP) module. It can be configured for digital PWM output. Additionally, +5V and ground test points are available as test point connections.

The PIC16F684 Low Pin-count (14) PIC® Flash microcontroller offer all of the advantages of the well recognized mid-range x14 architecture with standardized features including a wide operating voltage of 2.0-5.5 volts, on-board EEPROM Data Memory, and nanoWatt Technology. Standard analog peripherals include up to 8 channels of 10-bit A/D, an analog comparator module with two comparators programmable on-chip voltage reference and an Enhanced Capture/Compare/PWM (ECCP). The ECCP peripheral offers up to four outputs with programmable dead band delay and auto-shutdown and restart options.

Two 25LC640 SPI™ compatible serial EEPROM memory devices provide 8-bit by 16K bytes of non-volatile memory. They are used in conjunction with the signal analysis firmware (PICA2Dlab.hex) program to store data at a specified sample rate. For non real-time acquisition modes (oscilloscope, FFT and histogram), the PC program downloads the data from the 25LC640’s for computation and display.