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AN S-7600A/PIC16F877 JOURNEY

Part 3: Hot-Wiring the System
by Fred Eady

Start ı E-Mail 101 ı Automatic Transmission ı Mail Delivered ı Sources and PDF

MAIL DELIVERED

As you can see in Listing 1, the real fun begins after the DATA command. The idea here is to spark your imagination. In the message text, Iıve pretended that the flood detector in the basement has detected an inch or so of water on the basement floor. Iıve also made your day by telling you that someone is probably in your garage and it isnıt you because youıre somewhere else reading this e-mail. What Iım saying is that any event you can capture with a microcontroller can be used to trigger an e-mail message. Whatıs really nice is that you donıt have to write any complicated code to convey your message. Photo 3 is the actual Tera Term Pro window that captured the e-mail process that produced the e-mail message in Photo 4.

After youıve run my example and understand the mechanism, you can expand on the concept easily. In the previous two articles, I supplied you with a wealth of PIC16F877 and S-7600A utility routines that enable you to:

• get data via a menu or file transfer for entry into internal and external EEPROM
• initialize the Dallas DS1629 real-time clock via menu
• read time and temperature data from the DS1629
• read and write internal and external EEPROM
• use the TCP/IP socket functionality of the S-7600A
• use the PPP functionality of the S-7600A
• control a modem
• interface to Tera Term Pro

You now have the capability of taking the individual routines and applying them to your final e-mail program. For instance, you can store individual e-mail messages in EEPROM and retrieve the one you want to send depending on what triggers the e-mail process. You could have an "itıs too hot message" that is triggered by the DS1629 or a "door is ajar" message picked up by the PICıs I/O pins attached to simple micro switches. Basically, if you can sense it, you can send e-mail to anyone about it.

Now that you are an embedded e-mail guru and we can all keep in touch, Iıll finish up the installation of the EDTP embedded device server, which will reside at 216.53.172.209. Iıll use this server next time to demonstrate interactively how to add yet more networking capability to tiny embedded devices like the S-7600A/PIC16F877 Internet Engine. By interactively, I mean that youıll be able to use the power of the Internet to test-drive the technology you see in my articles.

You know how to serve web pages using a PIC. You know how to send e-mail using a PIC. When youıre finished reading the next installment, youıll know how to configure and implement a PIC-based TCP/IP client. Iıll even throw in some words on the server end too. See you then!

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