Microcontroller Applications Teaching a Practical Approach

There’s a broad field of applications for the microcontroller technology, that can be enumerated from simple, like small electric equipment operation, until sophisticated, like single loop digital controllers with man-machine and machine-machine interface, also using complex digital control techniques. The main preoccupation for us is to transmit to an undergraduate student, who hadn’t had any contact with this field, hardware and software concepts, in an integrated and step by step form, to develop and document a project using the microcontroller technology. Among the various microcontroller families existing in the market, we choose the 8051 family, because of its popularity, but the techniques can be migrated to another microcontroller family, with small routine modifications. The hardware modules were constructed with low cost devices and with two connectors types, to allow fast connection between the modules, project integration and flexibility.