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)

Coding a program to send the sensed data to the internet

If you remember, in Chapter 9, IoT Temperature-Logging System, we found that an ESP-01 module was used because it integrates Wi-Fi communication through ESP8266. This module was programmed using AT commands through the STM32 Blue Pill microcontroller (where AT stands for Attention). As mentioned at the beginning of the chapter, we will use the NodeMCU development board, which is depicted in the following photo:

Figure 10.8 – NodeMCU development board

Figure 10.8 – NodeMCU development board

This board is also based on the ESP8266 microcontroller. However, unlike the SP-01 module, this can be programmed directly from its micro USB port using different development IDEs and various programming languages such as Lua and C. It also includes general-purpose input/output (GPIO) pins to be programmed according to the developer's needs. These characteristics make the NodeMCU microcontroller one of the most popular IoT platforms today...