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)

Summary

In this chapter, we learned how to properly configure and set up the MPLAB X and the Arduino IDEs for the C microcontroller board programming. We were introduced to the C programming language, and in particular, a set of C language instructions necessary for programming the Blue Pill and microcontroller boards. To practice what you have learned about the C language, we looked at a number of practical circuits using the boards' internal and external LEDs. The instructions and structure learned in this chapter can be applied to the rest of this book.

Chapter 3, Turning an LED On and Off Using a Push Button, will focus on how to connect a push button with a pull-up resistor to a microcontroller board, as well as how to minimize electrical noise when using the push button. It will also explain how to set up a microcontroller board's input port via software, along with possible applications of push buttons.