Teeny Tiny little microcontrollers and Projects to come

Today I made I've made a small adaptor board to program the smallest microcontroller I've ever programmed. The pic16F616 is a neat little 16 pin micro with 8 analog inputs a bunch of other features which comes in a tiny little QFN package. I've had some of these available to me for a while now, and I've always wanted to make a project that would take advantage of its small size.

The little board I made came out quite nicely. I was concerned the PCB machine I used couldn't make traces small enough but it ended up working out. Below is a photo of the first "hello world" program I uploaded to it flashing an LED. I ended up toggling all the outputs on all pins to make sure the solder connections were good.

The first project I want to make is a small watch for working out. I've always wanted a simple little device that will run a quick 1 minute timer so I know how long to take my breaks in between sets. It will basically be just one button and maybe 6 small LEDs. I want to be able to press the button and have the LEDs do a sort of count down. I know there are stop watches out there, and smart activity trackers, but I just want something extremely simple that will only do one thing.

Having this microcontroller now at my disposal will be advantage for many projects in the future. I've really been into seeing how small I could make things lately, so this will definitely help with that.