Welcome to ELE102 Microcontroller course!

On this page we will publish new lecture notes every week, as the course is progressing. The lecture notes will contain the curriculum that you need to know for the exam, as well as some additional material for those of you who are eager for more in depth knowledge.

Lessons:

• Introduction
• Software and hardware preparations
  • Software installation
    • The official Arduino Software
    • PlatformIO
  • Hardware testing
    • Test project in PlatformIO
  • Simulator (optional)
    • Tinkercad
• Lesson 1a: What is a Microcontroller
  • Embedded Systems
  • Embedded System Characteristics
    • Applications
    • Future
  • Microcontroller (UC), Microprocessor, Integrated Circuit (IC)
    • Microprocessor Processing Structure
  • Compilation
    • Arduino
• Lesson 1b: Introduction to Arduino
  • Arduino Software
  • Arduino Hardware
    • Power (USB / Barrel Jack)
    • Pins (5V, 3.3V, GND, Analog, Digital, PWM, AREF)
    • Reset Button
    • Power LED Indicator
    • TX RX LEDs
    • Main IC
    • Voltage Regulator
  • Memory in Arduino
  • Arduino Programming
    • The Arduino UNO board
    • The Atmega328 microcontroller
    • Exercise: Blink an LED
    • Exercise: Blink using morse code
    • Exercise: Blink an external LED
    • Exercise: Hello World
  • The build and upload process (not mandatory to read)
    • A detailed look at the Arduino software library
    • The preprocessor
    • The compiler
    • The linker
    • Generation of the HEX file
    • The upload process
    • Covering the programming fundamentals
• Lesson 2: Digital I/O
  • Arduino program structure
    • Exercise: define a macro
  • Variable Types
  • Atmega328 GPIO pins
  • Digital outputs
    • Selecting a suitable current limiting resistor for the LED
  • Digital inputs
    • How to connect a button to the Arduino
    • Exercise: Digital output of digital input state
    • Exercise: Logic operations on digital inputs
  • Serial port output
    • Serial port monitor in the Arduino IDE
    • Serial port monitor in PlatformIO
    • Serial port monitor in TinkerCAD
    • Hello World
    • Exercise: Print some numbers
    • Exercise: Serial output of digital input
  • Simple arithmetics
    • Exercise: Calculator with serial port output
    • Exercise: Count to 10
    • Exercise: Calculator with binary display
• Lesson 3: Use of digital I/O and timing
  • Using digital inputs
  • Edge detection
    • Understanding Pull-up / Pull-down resistors
    • Edge detection algorithm
    • Simple button press counter
    • Simple button LED state change
    • Exercise: Rising and falling edge detection
    • Exercise: Rising edge counter
  • Efficient timing in the microcontroller
    • Exercise: Blink two LEDs at different frequencies
    • Exercise: Adjustable blink frequency
    • Constant frequency
    • Reducing the load on the microcontroller
    • millis() overflow
  • Switch bouncing
    • Bounce problem edge detection demonstration
    • Hardware debounce methods
    • Software debounce methods
    • Switch debounce for the edge detection demo
    • Exercise: Push button de-bouncing
    • Exercise: Stopwatch
  • Rough Timing in Arduino
• Lesson 4: Analog output (PWM)
  • Digital to analog converter
  • Pulse Width Modulation (PWM)
    • Analog output by PWM
    • Operation of a pulse width modulator
    • Mapping signals with different dynamic range
    • Exercise: Adjusting the light intensity of LED
    • Exercise: Continuously adjusting the light intensity of LED
    • Exercise: Adjusting the light intensity of multiple LEDs
  • Functions
    • No input no output
    • No output but with input
    • Integer return
    • Exercise: Abstracting away your hardware
    • Exercise: Pythagoras
    • Exercise: Tilt detection
    • Function for debounce of multiple push buttons
  • Loops
    • While loops
    • For loops
    • Do while loops
    • Loop example
    • Exercise: Blink a colorful LED n-times
    • Exercise: Blink a colorful LED n-times with user input
    • Exercise: Serial UI for LED control
• Lesson 5: Analog to digital conversion (ADC)
  • Introduction
    • Analog to digital converter
    • Successive Approximation (SAR) ADC.
    • Quantization
    • Important parameters for ADC operation
  • Using the ADC in Arduino
    • Exercise: print raw ADC value to serial port
    • Example: Temperature measurement using TMP36
    • Exercise: Change the unit of temperature measurement
    • Example: Potentiometer as Analog Input
    • Exercise: Potentiometer adjustable blink rate
    • Exercise: Temperature alarm (challenging)
  • Servo motor control
    • Example: Servo and map function
    • Exercise: Control the servo position based on light on phototransistor
    • Exercise: Toggle position setting by pushing a button
    • Exercise: Check the potmeter value before commanding the servo motor
• Lesson 6: Serial I/O
  • Introduction
    • Higher level protocol layers
  • The serial monitor
  • The Arduino Serial library
  • Serial output
    • Initialization
    • The Serial.write() method
    • The Serial.print() method
    • The Serial.println() method
    • ASCII table (and Unicode)
    • Example: Serial output of the push button state
  • Serial input
    • The Serial.read() method
  • Arrays
    • The Serial.readBytes() method
    • The Serial.readString() method
    • The Serial.readStringUntil() method
  • Switch-case
  • Exercises
    • Exercise: Servo motor control
    • Exercise: Triple button, triple LED
    • Exercise: Annoying a and b
• Lesson 7: Timers and interrupts
  • Interrupts
    • Interrupts in Arduino
    • External Interrupts
    • Exercise: change the trigger criteria
    • Demo: external interrupt on rising edge of both pins
    • Exercise: Using external interrupts to count switch bouncing
    • Pin change Interrupts
    • Internal Interrupts
  • Timers
    • Timers in Arduino
    • Different Timer purposes
    • Timer interrupts
    • Using a library to control timer 1
    • Exercise: User timer ISR for polling digital inputs
    • Exercise: RGB led blinking
  • Recursive functions
  • Random
  • Summary
• Lesson 8: LC-Display
  • Operation of the Hitachi HD44780 display controller
    • Electrical interface
    • Communication protocols
  • Arduino control of Hitachi HD44780 compatible display
    • Electrical test
    • Software test
  • Exercises and examples
    • Display uptime in seconds on UART and LCD
    • Display voltage value from potmeter
    • Exercise: thermometer
    • Splash screen and scrolling text
    • Display data from UART
    • Display data in different formats
    • Voltmeter with selectable scaling
    • Adding custom character to the display
  • Graphic LC-display
    • Example: Displaying the HVL logo
    • Circuit diagram
  • Bibliography
• Lesson 9: Memory and MCU architecture
  • Microcontroller architecture
    • Some well known processors
    • Atmega328p core architecture
    • Memory Requirement of an Embedded System
    • Reset Circuit
    • Clock Generator
    • I/O PORTS, Channels, Buffers
    • Serial I/O
    • Timers
  • Direct register access on Atmega328p
  • Memory usage
    • RAM usage at run time
    • Stack overflow
    • Little or big endian
  • Non volatile storage in EEPROM
    • Exercise: store ADC readings in EEPROM
  • Memory technology
    • Common Non-volatile Memory Devices
    • Common volatile Memory Devices
    • Flash memory
    • Random access memory
    • Static RAM
    • Dynamic RAM
    • EEPROM
    • Hard disk drives
  • Bibliography
• Lesson 10: Motor drive
  • Introduction to DC motors
    • Brushed DC motor operation
  • Brushed DC-motor drive
    • Control loops
    • Motor Speed Adjusting by PWM
    • Simple motor drive example using single transistor
    • Exercise: start and stop of motor
    • LM293D H-Brigde
    • A very basic example for the LM293D
    • Control function for easy use of the L293D
    • Exercise-1: Control motor speed with a potentiometer
    • Exercise-2: Change rotation direction using a button
    • A slightly more complete case with start, stop, and emergency stop
    • Start/stop, forward/reverse and speed control
    • Exercise: LM293D motor drive
    • Exercise: motor drive with acceleration ramp
    • Regenerative braking of the motor
    • Feature rich motor drive example using the L293D
    • Exercise: LM293D motor drive
    • Exercise: motor drive with acceleration ramp
  • Bibliography
• Lesson 11: Communication Protocols
  • Inter Integrated Circuit (I2C)
    • I2C operation
    • System Management Bus (SMBus)
    • I2C in Arduino
    • Connecting two Arduino’s using I2C
    • Exercise: Remote controlled LED
    • Exercise: Chat service between two arduinos
  • Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI)
    • SPI operation
    • SPI in Arduino
    • SPI I/O port expander
  • Software UART
    • Exercise: Message relay
  • Summary

Additional material:

• Additional material lesson 1
• Additional material lesson 2
  • Exercise: D-flip flop, and state machines (voluntary)
• Additional material lesson 3
  • Simple touch to If…Else
  • Switch debounce methods
    • Measuring switch bounce using oscilloscope
    • Software solutions
    • Measure the bouncing using interrupt
    • Delay method
    • Shift register method
    • Using a timer interrupt to poll the inputs
    • Pin change interrupt debounce with smoothing capacitor
    • Pin change interrupt debounce software only
    • Creating a library for software debounce
  • Multi tasking on the microcontroller
    • No more delay()
• Additional material lesson 4
  • Functions in C
    • Function syntax
    • Functions in Arduino
    • Function to initialize the sytem
    • Function to abstract hardware
    • Functions to do calculations
    • Function to calculate exponentiation
    • Function to compute square root
    • Returning multiple values
    • Using global (external) variables
    • Using a data structure
    • Using pointers
  • Using pointers in C
    • Void pointers
    • Function pointers
  • Recursive calling of functions
    • Example 1 - Factorial function
    • Example 2 - Fibonacci Series
  • Functions in separate files
  • Using the tilt sensor
• Additional material lesson 5
  • Detailed look at the Atmega328p ADC
    • Voltage reference for the ADC
    • ADC conversion speed
    • Low level control of the Analog to Digital Conversion
    • Increasing resolution by oversampling
  • Servo Motor Drive
    • Switching frequency
    • Servo motor library
    • Servo motor drive example
• Additional material lesson 6
  • Serial terminal emulator software
    • Store the strings in program memory
    • Simple command line interface
    • Arduino serial port buffer
    • Connecting two Arduino’s using UART
  • Conditionals
• Additional material lesson 7
  • Introduction
    • Timing in Microcontrollers
    • Timer with external clock signal
    • Interrupts in Arduino
  • External Interrupts
    • Practical exercises
    • External interrupt request 0 and 1
    • Pin change interrupts
    • Pin change interrupt example
  • Internal Interrupts
    • Timer controlled interrupts
    • Timer 1 interrupt example
    • Watchdog timer interrupt
    • Detailed look at the operation of the interrupt system
• Additional material lesson 8
  • LCD and Interrupt Class Activity Codes
• Additional material lesson 9
  • Changing the variable through its adress: Pointers
    • Exercise: blink a LED connected to pin 8
    • Reading and manipulating single bits
    • Exercise: analyze the above example
    • Exercise: read a digital input on pin A5
  • Determine RAM memory usage
  • Exercise: determine stack usage
  • Using the EEPROM
    • Manage the memory stucture for complex projects
    • NAND Flash
    • NOR Flash
  • Using external memory
    • External EEPROM
    • SD-card
  • Special memory types
    • Historical memory types
    • Random access memory (RAM)
• Additional material lesson 10
  • Transfer function
    • Regenerative braking of the motor
    • Advanced motor drive example
  • Motor drive assignment
• Additional material lesson 11
  • ANSI Escape sequences
  • How to design a reliable communication protocol
• Additional material lesson 12
  • I2C
• Additional material lesson 12

Projects:

• Mix
  • 4-bit binary counter
  • Using a potentiometer to test the analog to digital converter
  • Debounce of mechanical switch
    • Generalizing the concept
      • Rough Timing in Arduino
  • Operation
  • Usage
  • Stopwatch
  • Assignment 1 : Real time clock
  • Switching frequency modulation example
  • Arduino math functions
    • Trigonometry
  • Simple motor drive example with speed control
• Infrared remote
  • Optical communication
  • IR transmitters and receivers
  • Electrical characteristics
    • IR receiver
    • Phototransistor
  • Demodulation of the signal
• Cool Project: RC Car (Bluetooth or Joystick)
  • Bluetooth Controlled
  • Joystick Controlled
  • Wheels and DC motors
• Cool Project: Simple Robot Arm (Bluetooth or Joystick)
  • Bluetooth Controlled
  • Joystick Controlled
  • Mini 3-Dof manipulator

Appendices:

• Low power operation
  • Arduino UNO sleep mode
• Lesson Stacks, Queues, Lists
  • Memory allocation
    • Static memory allocation
    • Dynamic memory allocation
    • Custom memory allocation function
  • Linked List Data Structure
    • Manual assignment of elements in linked list
    • Linked list demo with various useful functions
  • Stacks
    • Example with statically allocated memory
    • Dynamic memory allocation stack example
  • Queues
    • Static queue Arduino example
    • Dynamic queue Arduino example

Todo

Add more projects if we feel like it (and we can find the time to write them)

You need to have:

For the microcontroller part of ELE102 you will be needing some hardware, as well as some software.

• Arduino Starter Kit

• Arduino Software

• PlatformIO