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 2: Software Setup and C Programming for Microcontroller Boards

In this chapter, you will review the basic configuration of the IDEs used for programming the Blue Pill and Curiosity Nano microcontroller boards, as well as learn the basics of the C programming language necessary for coding applications for the Blue Pill and the Curiosity Nano. This is by no means a comprehensive C tutorial. It contains important information to understand and complete the exercises explained in all the chapters of this book. In this chapter, we're going to cover the following main topics:

  • Introducing the C programming language
  • Introducing Curiosity Nano microcontroller board programming
  • Introducing Blue Pill microcontroller board programming
  • Example – Programming and using the microcontroller board's internal LED

By the end of this chapter, you will have received a solid introduction to the C programming language, including a set of programming instructions useful for developing many small and mid-sized microcontroller projects with the Blue Pill and Curiosity Nano microcontroller boards. This chapter also covers the use of the internal LED, which both the Blue Pill and the Curiosity Nano have. This can be very useful for quickly showing digital results (for example, confirming actions in your project).