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)

Chapter 10: IoT Plant Pot Moisture Sensor

With the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT), we are immersed in the new industrial revolution—the so-called Industry 4.0. One of the industries that have benefited the most from these technologies is agriculture (Chalimov, 2020). Agricultural IoT applications range from autonomous harvesting to sensors to recognize pests and diseases or to measure humidity. We can take advantage of these advances in our homes—for instance, monitoring our ornamental plants to have more efficient care.

In this chapter, you will put into practice information learned in Chapter 9, IoT Temperature-Logging System, about how to connect and program an internet connection, but this time we will introduce a NodeMCU microcontroller to facilitate the ESP8266 programming. You will learn how to create a digital device to monitor a plant pot, reading data from a soil moisture sensor and determining whether it needs water, and then sending an alert to...