Hi, I am very new to electronics. I am looking to make a controller box for my car. In theory the idea is very simple. I need a thing that I can program that has an LCD display, 8 analog to digital outputs, 1 digital to analog output and 1 relay output. The device would monitor sensors (0-5v DC inputs) and appropriately turn on and off the output relay and send 0-5v output signal on the 1 DAC output.
I am ok with C and C++, and good with computers, but I really never programmed chips before. The board I am looking at is “Compact Development Board with ATMega128” from sparkfun.com. From the schematics it looks like it has 8 ADC pins but 4 are taken up by JTAG programmer connector. Can I use the taken pins as well, when JTAG is not plugged in? Also I can not see a DAC pin, does this chip has a DAC?
Also, can you recommend a place where I can find some sample programs that I can load in to the board, something that uses LCD and buttons, and perhaps shows how to retrieve ADC values. Like I mentioned I am really new to this, but I really need this done, so jumping a bit head first here. Would appreciate any help. Any books/tutorials.
- Bogdan