Introduction to microcontrollers

Arduino Getting Started Tutorial Introduction Arduino is a very popular term you will find on the internet if you are an electronic hobbyist. Most people picture Arduino as that popular blue board (Arduino Uno) that is used in many projects. In fact Arduino goes way beyond that. Based on the Arduino website it is described as a platform. However I would describe it more as a very clever standard. With the evolution of microcontrollers in the industrial world, hobbyists wanted to use them for their projects. If you do not know what a microcontroller is you can have a look here: Link . However getting into microcontrollers can be daunting as programming skills are required, hardware cost and software costs need to be considered.   The Arduino comes to the rescue by providing the advantages and bonus features below: 1) A single free and open source software easy to download and install. 2) A single standardized programming language that is easy to learn. 3...

STM32 CubeMx tutorial Introduction Welcome to this STM32 Cube Mx tutorial. You might be wondering what is it all about? Don’t worry you will find the answers here. STM32 Cube Mx is a free software provided by ST Microelectronics who builds the STM32 line of micro controllers. One issue with these devices is that a lot of code needs to be written to initialize the device. The STM32 Cube Mx is a GUI that makes life much easier. It helps reduce the burden regarding initializing the micro controller. Bear in mind though that it will not write the code regarding the operation you want to make. Lets take an example, suppose I want to use a STM32F100VGT6 and blink an external LED. The STM32 Cube Mx will help me get the micro controller setup and get an output port ready for me. Unfortunately it will not tell the micro controller that I want to blink the led and at what speed I want the LED to blink. I have however given a small glimpse on how to turn switch on an output port at...

Introduction to PIC Microcontrollers Introduction PIC Microcontrollers have been the very first microcontrollers I worked with. I started with the venerable 16F84 and I have worked with a lot of other PIC devices since then. The aim here like my other posts is to give an idea of the implication of working with such devices. So basically what is a PIC Microcontroller, well its another microcontroller available on the market made by Microchip. PIC Microcontrollers are available in a wide variety of offerings namely 8bit, 16 bit or also called DSPIC and 32 bit. Don't get scared here on the number of bits they are actually the size of instruction that the microcontrollers can process. 8bit microcontrollers are out there and performing very complicated tasks. Microchip enhances all their portfolio offerings regularly to make sure their microcontrollers keep up to the job. From a hobbyist point of view there seems to be some models which are very popular mainly the through hole p...