Reverse Engineering to Emulate Ink Cartridges for a Epson Printer

Step 4 Setting Up Our Microcontroller!

Start up your IDE, in my case it's MPLab, create a new project for your chip and create a basic hello world program to make sure your chip is going.

Note: My hello world program sends "Hello World!\r\n" over Serial to my computer at 38400bps

#include <p18f2550.h> // Include file specific for this chip
#include <usart.h> // USART Functions
#include <stdio.h> // printf(format,...) , sprintf(string, format, ...), etc...

#include "delay.h"

void main(){

    PORTA = 0x00;
    PORTB = 0x00;
    PORTC = 0x00;

    TRISA = 0x00;
    TRISB = 0x00;
    TRISC = 0x00;

    ADCON1 = 0x0F; // This is such a trouble maker, never forget to turn the Analogue pins back to digital! :P

    TRISCbits.TRISC7 = 1; // Turns the RX pin into an input (look it up in your datasheet for your chip)

    OpenUSART(USART_TX_INT_OFF & USART_RX_INT_OFF & USART_ADDEN_OFF & USART_BRGH_HIGH & USART_CONT_RX & USART_EIGHT_BIT & USART_ASYNCH_MODE,78);

    while(1){
        putrsUSART("Hello World!\r\n"); // Send a message via Serial

         LATAbits.LATA0 = ~LATAbits.LATA0; //Flash an LED by toggling it on and off

         DelayMS(500); // A delay function I've created
     }
}

This was set up with a 3.3V power supply because the ink cartridges run on 3.3Volts

Why a hello world program? Well, every time I set up a new project on a bread board, I always want to make sure I've got the configureation bits correct and that I'm not getting garbage in the terminal.

I think this is good practice and everyone should do it! :P

If your chip is doing something simple like mine, Great!! on to the next step

Comments

[dn_nguoiban]

how do you control nozzles of printhead?