Continue to Site

Welcome to our site!

Electro Tech is an online community (with over 170,000 members) who enjoy talking about and building electronic circuits, projects and gadgets. To participate you need to register. Registration is free. Click here to register now.

  • Welcome to our site! Electro Tech is an online community (with over 170,000 members) who enjoy talking about and building electronic circuits, projects and gadgets. To participate you need to register. Registration is free. Click here to register now.

Getting started

Status
Not open for further replies.

Broz

New Member
I have some basic knowledge and experience in analog and digital circuits. The only programming experience I've had centers around Fortran. I understand that microcontrollers are powerful tools that I could use in a lot of my projects. I do a lot of PWM stuff and I understand that if I learn microcontrollers I could abandon my reliance on the old 555. The problem is, when I find a website that is suppose to give the beginner some insight, I find that it always starts just a little above my knowledge base. I can make sense of some it, but there is always something lacking in my knowledge to fully understand what's being discussed. My lack of knowledge on the subject also means I don't even know what questions to ask.

So I will just ask this: Where does a guy like me get started in microcontrollers? Any advice you experts could give will be appreciated. Thank you.
 
Fortran? Do people still use that? There are about a half dozen microcontrollers commonly used by hobbists. The two main ones are PIC and AVR. PIC is more widely documented, but AVR are better (sorry, just stirring up trouble here). I chose AVR for the Assembly Language, and richer instruction set. Like you, my programming was a little out dated, but I was more familiar with 6502 assembly, so figured it would be an easier transistion for me.
Never seen a Fortran compiler, so like me, you might look at what languages seem most familiar to FORTRAN, which would be BASIC and 'C'... lot of choices, huh. Another plus for AVR, the software is free to download, PIC you have to pay for the full version.

Nigel's tutorials for PIC are great, regardless of which chip you are considering, or even which language. Link posted in previous post by Greg. I learned a lot about the hardware side, and chip features like ADC, Timer/counters, interupts, and such. Never used a PIC, or programmed in 'C', and most likely never will. They are that well written.
 
HarveyH42 said:
I chose AVR for the Assembly Language, and richer instruction set.

Considering the PIC is a RISC processor, you would expect it to have a smaller number of instructions, that's the point!.

Like you, my programming was a little out dated, but I was more familiar with 6502 assembly, so figured it would be an easier transistion for me.

Interesting you went for the AVR from a 6502 background, I would consider the PIC is more suited for a 6502 background (like myself) and an AVR more suited for a Z80 background?.

Both are fine, but neither is much help with a FORTRAN background, apart from the obvious general programming ability.
 
I'm at almost the same point as the original poster. My background is (from a long while ago) Fortran, Pascal, various assemblers (from Z80 to IBM/360), C, Basic; these days what progamming I do is usually in Pascal or some variant of SQL with very occasional forays into C on Windows platforms.

I agree Nigel's tutorial is good. This forum also throws up a lot that's useful.

I'm looking at using a PIC for a project, and since it's a one-off, I'm thinking about using an 18F and programming it in C. (Cost for the microcontroller isn't much of an issue when I'm thinking of a one-off project and I figure I should be able to get by with the free C compiler from Microchip even after some of the optimisations turn off after 60 days.)

What I have found difficult to find anywhere is much tutorial information on using C or relocatable assembler for PICs - most of what is easy to find is using assembler in absolute mode.
 
Sorry, I tend tease a little on PIC...

Most any micro will work just as well for most hobby projects, as most people only use a very small portion of the chip's potential when they first get started, and even years later. Just depends on what your future goals are in with micros. Most people start with blinking an LED. Something that could be done with a half dozen descrete parts.

To start, you'll need to invest some time and money, usually less than $50. Not a huge amount, but if you don't like the chip, or you find out later the chips were cheap for a reason... you'll need to buy/build a new programmer, download new software, and spend more time figuring it all out. The second one should be easier, since the hardware and chip features function about the same. Download some data sheets, visit manufacturer websites, search the web. Make your own choice based on your needs and goals.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Latest threads

New Articles From Microcontroller Tips

Back
Top