Book Image

DIY Microcontroller Projects for Hobbyists

By : Miguel Angel Garcia-Ruiz, Pedro Cesar Santana Mancilla
Book Image

DIY Microcontroller Projects for Hobbyists

By: Miguel Angel Garcia-Ruiz, Pedro Cesar Santana Mancilla

Overview of this book

We live in a world surrounded by electronic devices, and microcontrollers are the brains of these devices. Microcontroller programming is an essential skill in the era of the Internet of Things (IoT), and this book helps you to get up to speed with it by working through projects for designing and developing embedded apps with microcontroller boards. DIY Microcontroller Projects for Hobbyists are filled with microcontroller programming C and C++ language constructs. You'll discover how to use the Blue Pill (containing a type of STM32 microcontroller) and Curiosity Nano (containing a type of PIC microcontroller) boards for executing your projects as PIC is a beginner-level board and STM-32 is an ARM Cortex-based board. Later, you'll explore the fundamentals of digital electronics and microcontroller board programming. The book uses examples such as measuring humidity and temperature in an environment to help you gain hands-on project experience. You'll build on your knowledge as you create IoT projects by applying more complex sensors. Finally, you'll find out how to plan for a microcontroller-based project and troubleshoot it. By the end of this book, you'll have developed a firm foundation in electronics and practical PIC and STM32 microcontroller programming and interfacing, adding valuable skills to your professional portfolio.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)

Connecting a soil moisture sensor to the Blue Pill board

We will start this section by learning how to use a sensor to measure soil humidity in a plant pot, and you will later learn how to connect it to the STM32 Blue Pill board to build a plant pot moisture-monitoring system.

Introducing soil moisture sensors

A soil moisture sensor consists of two pads that measure the amount of water in the soil. The sensed value is acquired by allowing the the electric current running through the soil to pass through, and according to resistance, this shows the level of humidity in the plant pot.

You can find a generic breakout module that is pretty straightforward to use. This is shown in the following photo:

Figure 10.1 – Soil moisture sensor breakout board

Figure 10.1 – Soil moisture sensor breakout board

The pads are connected to the breakout board with the included female-to-female jumper wires. The breakout board connects to the STM32 Blue Pill board with four pins, outlined as follows:

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