SparkFun Forums

[cesarsalad]

I want to build a digital chess/scrabble clock. It should count down from a certain time for one player; when he hits his button his opponent's timer starts. The display should be an LCD display. There should also be a button in the middle to pause the timer. I know I can implement this with a PIC but is that overkill? How do people program digital chess timers?

[riden]

I don't think using a PIC or other microcontroller for this project is an overkill by any means. You could built a timer using discrete components (digital counters and LED display instead of LCD) but the wiring using a PIC and LCD will be drastically simpler and use far less components.

If you don't want to roll your own hardware, I see that SparkFun carries a "Fun Development Board" that looks like, well, fun to play with. It has all the hardware you will need for this project.

The software isn't too complicated for this type of an application either with all the major pieces required (LCD driver, timer routines, etc.) readily available.