Book Image

Creative DIY Microcontroller Projects with TinyGo and WebAssembly

By : Tobias Theel
Book Image

Creative DIY Microcontroller Projects with TinyGo and WebAssembly

By: Tobias Theel

Overview of this book

While often considered a fast and compact programming language, Go usually creates large executables that are difficult to run on low-memory or low-powered devices such as microcontrollers or IoT. TinyGo is a new compiler that allows developers to compile their programs for such low-powered devices. As TinyGo supports all the standard features of the Go programming language, you won't have to tweak the code to fit on the microcontroller. This book is a hands-on guide packed full of interesting DIY projects that will show you how to build embedded applications. You will learn how to program sensors and work with microcontrollers such as Arduino UNO and Arduino Nano IoT 33. The chapters that follow will show you how to develop multiple real-world embedded projects using a variety of popular devices such as LEDs, 7-segment displays, and timers. Next, you will progress to build interactive prototypes such as a traffic lights system, touchless hand wash timer, and more. As you advance, you'll create an IoT prototype of a weather alert system and display those alerts on the TinyGo WASM dashboard. Finally, you will build a home automation project that displays stats on the TinyGo WASM dashboard. By the end of this microcontroller book, you will be equipped with the skills you need to build real-world embedded projects using the power of TinyGo.
Table of Contents (13 chapters)
10
Afterword

The Arduino UNO

The Arduino UNO is one of the most popular boards out there. It is powered by an 8-bit ATmega328P microcontroller, and as of the writing of this book, there are lots of derivates from the original Arduino UNO boards. Let's get to know it better in the following subsections.

Getting to know the technical specifications

As you can see in the following table, the ATmega328P has only 16 MHz and 32 KB Flash memory. Standard Go produces a Hello World program of about 1.2 MB, which would not even fit on this microcontroller. So, we are working with very limited hardware here, but you will see that this is sufficient to build amazing projects.

Here is a brief look at the technical specs of the Arduino UNO:

Table 1.1 – Technical specifications

Note

Consider the DC current per I/O pin of 20 mA as an upper limit. You should not exceed this limit to prevent damaging your microcontroller.

Let's have a look at the pinout next...