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)

Understanding Morse code and the SOS message

Morse code is a telecommunication technique used for encoding, receiving, and sending alphanumeric and special characters by applying signal sequences with different duration. Morse code is named after Samuel Morse, a telegraph inventor. This code is important because it was commonly used for radio and wired communication over long distances, in particular, for sending and receiving telegrams. Nowadays, Morse code is still used in amateur (ham) radio communications because it can be reliably decoded by people when electromagnetic atmospheric conditions are unfavorable. More importantly, Morse code can be used in an emergency by sending SOS messages in the form of light, audio, or electromagnetic signals. Morse code is still sometimes used in aviation as a radio navigation aid.

Each character in Morse code is made with dashes (represented by the - symbol) and dots (represented by the . symbol). A dot is one signal unit, and a dash is...