Microcontrollers & Use in Embedded Technology

Microcontrollers & Use in Embedded Technology

Its fun programming and working with microcontrollers. With microcontrollers you can create a piece of hardware which acts according to your wish (obviously with some limitations !). Examples are you can flash a LED, drive a 7 segment display, print text on a LCD, receive signals from a remote control, control electrical appliances of your room, build a robot that follows a line on the floor and avoids obstacles coming in between, frequency meter and infinitely many more..

BSNL JTO COACHING

Basically a Microcontroller is a mini computer with CPU, Memory, I/O lines etc. Microcontrollers are much better for smaller embedded systems than their ancestors i.e. microprocessors, if you are developing a system using microprocessor, then your hardware or circuit will be more complex whereas if you choose a microcontroller, your hardware becomes simple because all the necessary peripherals such as RAM, ROM, TIMERS, I/O ports etc are embedded in a microcontroller. Therefore it is also called a mini computer on a chip. Now we will start with interfacing various devices to microcontrollers (Assuming you have basic knowledge of 8051 architecture and assembly programming and also C). I have chosen 8051 microcontroller due to its simplicity in architecture and assembly language, and learning 8051 chip is much easier than other microcontrollers if you don’t have any prior knowledge on microcontrollers. For more detailed information of hardware architecture and assembly language of 8051 microcontroller you can refer hardware manual and instruction set from ATMEL’s homepage.
Most of the projects and tutorials published here are based on Atmel’s AT89S52 microcontroller, it is a 8- bit microcontroller with 8051 architecture, comes in a 40 pin DIP, contains all necessary peripherals required for a hobby project. Now for a microcontroller to be operational the minimum hardware you need is a crystal oscillator, power supply, power on reset etc. So I have come up with a very simple development board to carry on the projects and interfacing tutorials published here. (Note: This development board is not compulsory; you can also rig up the circuits in breadboard since most of the circuits are simple). You can construct the development board on a general purpose circuit board. (Soon I will be publishing PCB layout for this).
8051 Development Board.
We will start with interfacing microcontroller with LED’s, Displays, Motors, Relays etc.
· Interfacing LED(s)
· Interfacing 7 segment Display
· Interfacing multiple 7 segment displays
· Basics of PWM
· Interfacing Relays
· Interfacing 4×4 keyboard
· 8051 Serial port
· many more to come…
In order set up your simple home lab, you need
· keil or any other assembler/compiler.
· ISP programmer circuit
· ISP programmer software
· Target hardware (your development board or circuit).v