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 8: Gas Sensor

An indoor environment with good air quality is essential to guarantee a healthy environment (Marques and Pitarma, 2017). The MQ-2 gas sensor can be an excellent way to measure the quality parameters of indoor air or as an early fire detection system. In this chapter, you will learn how to build a practical system for detecting gases in the environment (which we will call a gas sensor) and connect the MQ-2 gas sensor to a Blue Pill microcontroller card.

The following main topics will be covered in this chapter:

  • Introducing the MQ-2 gas sensor
  • Connecting a gas sensor to the STM32 microcontroller board
  • Writing a program to read the gas concentration over the sensor board
  • Testing the system

At the end of this chapter, you will know about the operation of an MQ-2 gas sensor, and you will be able to connect it correctly to the STM32 microcontroller card and view the data obtained from the sensor. You will be able to apply what you have...