Microcontroller ADC Hex equivalent and display

Question

I'm only familiar with the 68HC11 as I have been learning its assembly language the past 2 months. In its ADC (Analog to Digital Converter). 5V (or whatever highest cutoff set by Vrh) is hex FF while 0V is 00. How about in other microcontrollers you have encountered. What is the hex value of the highest voltage and lowest?

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Also in the HC11. I can make the ADC output FF decrement until it reaches 00 and display it at a screen. In the above image, the lowest point is FF (or 255) and highest 00.

Taken from the following when I programmed the HC11 within the unit to do this:

enter image description here

I'd like to know what display you have used that can also do like the above because I'd like to try others too.

• user57037: Here is how it works. For an 8 bit ADC, the highest value will be 255, which is FF in hex. For 10 bit it will be 1023, which is 3ff in hex. For 12 bit it will be 4095 which is FFF in hex. It is always one less than a power of two. For 8 bit it is 2^8 - 1. For 10 bit it is 2^10 -1. For 12 bit it is 2^12-1. Etc. There may be some exceptions out there. But this is almost always how it works.
• user57037: FF is 255, not 256. FYI.
• Mattman944: A typical display will have coordinates 0, 0 at the upper left. But, when drawing a math graph, coordinate 0, 0 is at the lower left. So, you should invert the vertical to make it more human readable. Ydisplay = 256 - Yadc
• TonyM: @mkeith, the 9-channel 12-bit ADCs in the Intel (Altera) MAX 10 FPGAs convert to 0x000..0xFFE rather than 0x000..0xFFF. But that's the only exception I've seen across ADCs as ICs or in MCUs, FPGAs etc.
• Jtl: the display comes from the Brainmaster EEG software screen. id like to know what other software can display it like that or in waveforms too bec id like to try others.

Answer 1

1. 68HC11 has a built-in 8-bit ADC. Many other MCUs also have 8-bit or even better ADCs so 256 counts or more. External ADCs can be used if the MCU has no built-in ADC. Typically 10 or 12 bits which give you 1024 or 4096 counts, some might have 16 bits for 65536 counts.

2. There may be specialized PC programs or libraries to do PC programs to draw generic plots with generic received data. Generally if you have a specific program you already have, it communicates with some specific protocol. If you want a program that receives certain protocol you need to find it or make it yourself. It is likely someone knows what the protocol is and has made a program to receive data with that protocol. Sometimes device manuals have documentation about how they transfer data so you can be compatible.

• Jtl: The protocol is simple. It just reads from serial ports numbers from 0 to 255 (FF) and plots them on screen. i was asking if you encountered other programs like it
• Justme: I have encountered, yes. Used, no. Did you try putting "serial port data visualization" into your favourite search engine and see the results?
• Jtl: Thats a brilliant suggestion. I never knew such combination of words even exist. Thanks.
• Justme: @Jtl I have noticed it a common problem that people can't find what they need because they either don't know what words to use or even if they do they still use an odd selection of somewhat related words an don't get good results. I think using search engines requires some specific experience too.