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)

Connecting the resistor and the super-bright LED to the microcontroller board

This section shows how to use a super-bright LED connected to a microcontroller board to display a Morse code message. We begin by explaining how to connect a super-bright LED to one of the input ports of the Blue Pill and how to use a transistor as a switch to control the super-bright LED. Then, we describe how to connect the super-bright LED to the Curiosity Nano board.

Figure 6.2 shows a Fritzing diagram containing a super-bright LED:

Figure 6.2 – A super-bright LED connected to a Blue Pill's I/O port

Figure 6.2 – A super-bright LED connected to a Blue Pill's I/O port

As you can see from Figure 6.2, the super-bright LED's anode is connected to a 1 k ohm current-limiting resistor. The resistor is connected to output port B12, providing 3.3 V to it every time a dot or dash from a Morse code character is sent to it. The following are the steps for connecting all the components shown in Figure 6.2:

  1. Connect the 1 k ohm...