Newbie asking about microcontroller programming

valturbo · 1st March 2009, 07:05 AM

I'm an unemployed electrical engineer. I've spent most of my career working with audio. I'm trying use my new found free-time to brush up on micro controllers and embedded programming.

Any suggestions or opinions on development packages? PIC/Atmel/WHO?

Any suggestions on texts about sensors and interfacing?

philpoole · 1st March 2009, 07:16 AM

Welcome to the forums!

From a career point of view, any of those would be useful experience I suppose. If you get involved in embedded programming, you could find yourself on rather different chipsets to that.
I am/was an embedded programmer, and I spent a few weeks when I started working on a chip a bit like an old 8-bit 6809, but then it was all 32bit transputer based cores, and eventually linux platforms. Quite different from say a PIC. So learning on a PIC or similar is useful grounding, but don't worry too much about the particular chip you start on.
Being able to use a C (or C++) compiler in an embedded system, and obviously know the language a bit, would be more useful than a particular micro type. There's loads on the web to learn if you're in the dark about C/C++.

Serge66 · 1st March 2009, 07:37 AM

Greetings and welcome aboard,

Have a look at this address:

http://www.arduino.cc/

I have not played with it yet. I bought a PIC programming kit from Velleman and programmed a couple of chips.

Have fun.

Serge

Brett · 1st March 2009, 09:05 AM

Also check out http://www.mikroe.com/ for a lot of boards and software. A friend got in the big PIC boards and I've been working on coding a big audio switcher project for it.
Very nicely made and the BASIC compliler works fine from my few hours experience. Nice to be playing with uC's again.

Cal Weldon · 1st March 2009, 05:49 PM

Hello and welcome to the forums.

1st March 2009, 07:05 AM	#1
valturbo diyAudio Member Join Date: Mar 2009	Newbie asking about microcontroller programming I'm an unemployed electrical engineer. I've spent most of my career working with audio. I'm trying use my new found free-time to brush up on micro controllers and embedded programming. Any suggestions or opinions on development packages? PIC/Atmel/WHO? Any suggestions on texts about sensors and interfacing?

1st March 2009, 07:37 AM	#3
Serge66 diyAudio Member Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Canton of Jura	Greetings and welcome aboard, Have a look at this address: http://www.arduino.cc/ I have not played with it yet. I bought a PIC programming kit from Velleman and programmed a couple of chips. Have fun. Serge __________________ 'I have no faith in prayer that's not electronically augmented' Philip K. Dick "A Maze Of Death" 'I have no faith in bimbos that are not surgically augmented' Serge66

1st March 2009, 05:49 PM	#5
Cal Weldon Speakerholic diyAudio Moderator Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: British Columbia	Hello and welcome to the forums. __________________ Next stop: Margaritaville Some of Cal's stuff \| Cal Weldon Consulting

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1st March 2009, 07:16 AM	#2
philpoole diyAudio Member Join Date: Oct 2004	Welcome to the forums! From a career point of view, any of those would be useful experience I suppose. If you get involved in embedded programming, you could find yourself on rather different chipsets to that. I am/was an embedded programmer, and I spent a few weeks when I started working on a chip a bit like an old 8-bit 6809, but then it was all 32bit transputer based cores, and eventually linux platforms. Quite different from say a PIC. So learning on a PIC or similar is useful grounding, but don't worry too much about the particular chip you start on. Being able to use a C (or C++) compiler in an embedded system, and obviously know the language a bit, would be more useful than a particular micro type. There's loads on the web to learn if you're in the dark about C/C++.

1st March 2009, 09:05 AM	#4
Brett diyAudio Member Join Date: Jan 2002	Also check out http://www.mikroe.com/ for a lot of boards and software. A friend got in the big PIC boards and I've been working on coding a big audio switcher project for it. Very nicely made and the BASIC compliler works fine from my few hours experience. Nice to be playing with uC's again.

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