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I have previously shown how to use the PIC32 SPI module to use the 12-bit DAC MCP4822: http://tahmidmc.blogspot.com/2014/10/pic32-spi-using-mcp4822-12-bit-serial.html . While that does allow you to generate analog outputs as desired, it requires you to use CPU cycles to process the timer interrupt and accordingly drive the SPI module. Since the PIC32 contains DMA channels, the process can be completely offloaded from the CPU. For an idea of the PIC32 DMA module, refer to my previously written article: http://tahmidmc.blogspot.com/2014/05/simple-pic32-dma-example.html Fig. 1 - The generated sine wave at fpwm = 400kHz and 32 elements in the sine table So, the simple way of offloading the SPI update to the DMA module would be to let the DMA channel transfer data to the SPI buffer. The SPI module is configured for 16-bit data transfer (since the MCP4822 write command requires 2 bytes). This means that the cell size for the DMA channel has been set to 2 (2 bytes to transfer once triggered)....

I recently got a few pieces of the MCP4822 DAC. You can check out the datasheet here: http://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/DeviceDoc/22249A.pdf I found them to be neat little devices. In a small 8-pin PDIP package, the MCP4822 comes with 2 12-bit DACs, which you can easily configure over SPI. This was a great opportunity to get a simple PIC32 SPI application going. I worked on this today to see how fast I can get the DAC output going. Here's the pinout of the MCP4822: Fig. 1 - MCP4822 pinout (taken from datasheet) The MCP4822 can be supplied a voltage in the range of 2.7V to 5.5V. Since I use 3.3V for my PIC32, I used the same 3.3V supply for the VDD for the MCP4822. Pin 5 is the active low signal LDAC that is used to synchronize the two DAC channels. When this pin is brought low, the data in the DAC's input register is copied to the output and both outputs are updated at the same time. I just had this tied to ground. VoutA and VoutB are the two output pins. The other pins are...