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 11: IoT Solar Energy (Voltage) Measurement

Solar energy is considered one of the most promising renewable energy sources in the face of global warming challenges. It has been considered one of the best alternatives to reduce the dependency on fossil fuels and meet the growing demand for electricity (Ryan, 2005). To achieve this, sunlight is converted into electricity, and the sunlight is collected through solar panels.

In this chapter, you will continue creating IoT software for the STM32 Blue Pill microcontroller board using a voltage sensor to measure the solar energy collected by a solar panel. The application will send the sensed data to the internet using the NodeMCU ESP8266 microcontroller board.

In this chapter, we will cover the following main topics:

  • Connecting a solar panel to the Blue Pill board
  • Reading data from a voltage sensor module
  • Coding a program to send the sensed data to the internet
  • Showing sensor data results over the internet...