The Best Microcontrollers Books for Beginners

ARM Microcontrollers: Programming and Circuit Building Volume 1This book is a guide on programming on the bare chip ARM microcontroller and building circuits that sense the environment, communicate with other devices and computers, and provide motion and robotics—a ground-up to production-ready approach. The instruction in the book is for the beginner and intermediate interested in creating electronics projects that use the ARM microcontroller. If you are totally new to electronics and programming, this book will get you started in the right way.

If you are an Arduino user, it's time to break off of the Arduino one-off projects and get more advanced and get into ARM programming and circuit building. Even the beginner can get started. I use a bare chip technique, so you will be prepared if you want to get a real job in this field, or want to make real consumer electronics that are efficient, more functional, and cost-effective. The aim of this book is to start you off with a very powerful and inexpensive microcontroller so you can build complex projects for anything from smart home, IoT, robotics, automotive, appliance control, and much more. Alternatively, starting with an Arduino platform, you would need to reengineer the project if you wanted to get your project to market. Since you are starting with the bare chip, you don't need to be clouded by all of the components that are on typical development boards like Arduinos. You build the circuits from scratch and no reverse engineering is needed. Products need to have minimal components that perform the function most effectively for high-volume production lines. Real development is more than just putting disparate modules together and adding libraries to code. Critical functions may be needed requiring the full attention of the MCU where more advanced techniques may be needed. C/C++ coding is taught in this book. So, you've been on the Arduino train for years. You finally had that mind-blowing idea and you want to sell it to the masses! But, you have this development board and you need to make your project cost-effective (not contain every component on the Arduino board and on all of the shields globbed onto it). Better yet, you went out on the job hunt, only to find nobody will hire you because you don't have real coding and product development experience (coding without using ready-made libraries that may be less efficient or doesn't let you get control of the registers and make real efficient state machine interrupt-driven code used in critical applications). Whether you are an engineering student trying to figure all of this stuff out (the book is in plain English and geared for the beginner) or you are a maker or tinkerer wanting to get to the next level and become unstoppable! This book is for you! When you learn from the bare chip, adding components only when you need them on the board, you will have the power to build your own schematics and board layouts, minimizing the components needed in the product design and the size of the board. When you code from the ground up, making YOUR OWN libraries, you will be in command of the code and you will be able to have full control of how the controller is able to monitor sensors, control peripheral components and devices in response to the sensors, make sure sensing and control are not hindered by code not well thought out (because you are in the driver's seat), and provide communication with protocols that way you want to.

Arduino Microcontroller Projects You Can Build Today!The Arduino has become widely popular among hobbyists and ham radio operators. Hams are exploring these powerful, inexpensive microcontrollers, creating new projects and amateur station gear. With its Open Source model, the Arduino community freely shares software and hardware designs, making projects easier to build and modify. Arduino for Ham Radio introduces you to the exciting world of microcontrollers and Open Source hardware and software.

It starts by building a solid foundation through descriptions of various Arduino boards and add-on components, followed by a collection of ham radio-related practical projects. Beginning with simple designs and concepts and gradually increasing in complexity and functionality, there is something here for everyone. Projects can be built quickly and used as-is, or they can be expanded and enhanced with your own personal touches. Projects: Random Code Practice Generator, CW Beacon and Foxhunt Keyer,. Fan Speed Controller, Digital Compass,. Weather Station, RF Probe with LED Bar Graph, Solar Battery Charge Monitor,. On-Air Indicator, Talking SWR Meter,. Talking GPS/UTC Time/Grid Square, Indicator, Iambic Keyer, Waveform Generator, PS/2 CW Keyboard, Field Day Satellite Tracker, Azimuth/Elevation Rotator Controller, CW Decoder, Lightning Detector and CDE/Hy-Gain Rotator Controllers.

This book is self-published and is printed on demand. The original ISBN was generated in 2012, but if you purchase the book new from Amazon you will get the new version, which was uploaded December 2018. This book, now in its fifth edition, is the first in a series of three books that teach the fundamentals of embedded systems as applied to the ARM Cortex-M family of microcontrollers. This fifth edition focuses on the LaunchPads based on the TM4C123, TM4C1294, and MSP432E4 microcontrollers. This first volume is an introduction to computers and interfacing focusing on assembly language and C programming.

The second volume, Embedded Systems: Real-Time Interfacing to ARM Cortex-M Microcontrollers, focuses on hardware/software interfacing and the design of embedded systems. There are MSP432P versions of the first two volumes. The third volume, Embedded Systems: Real-Time Operating Systems for ARM Cortex-M Microcontrollers, is an advanced book focusing on operating systems, high-speed interfacing, control systems, and robotics. The third volume could also be used for professionals wishing to design or deploy a real-time operating system onto an ARM platform. This first book is an introductory book that could be used at the college level with little or no prerequisites. An embedded system is a system that performs a specific task and has a computer embedded inside. A system is comprised of components and interfaces connected together for a common purpose. This book is an introduction to embedded systems. Specific topics include microcontrollers, fixed-point numbers, the design of software in assembly language and C, elementary data structures, programming input/output including interrupts, analog to digital conversion, digital to analog conversion. This book employs many approaches to learning. It will not include an exhaustive recapitulation of the information in data sheets. First, it begins with basic fundamentals, which allows the reader to solve new problems with new technology. Second, the book presents many detailed design examples. These examples illustrate the process of design. There are multiple structural components that assist learning. Checkpoints, with answers in the back, are short easy to answer questions providing immediate feedback while reading. Simple homework, with answers to the odd questions on the web, provides more detailed learning opportunities. The book includes an index and a glossary so that information can be searched. The most important learning experiences in a class like this are of course the laboratories. Each chapter has suggested lab assignments. More detailed lab descriptions are available on the web. Specifically for this volume, look at the lab assignments for EE319K. For Volume 2 refer to the EE445L labs, and for Volume 3, look at the lab assignments for EE445M/EE380L.6.There is a web site accompanying this book http://users.ece.utexas.edu/~valvano/arm. Posted here are Keil uVision and Texas Instruments Code Composer Studio projects for each of the example programs in the book. You will also find data sheets and Excel spreadsheets relevant to the material in this book. The book will cover embedded systems for ARM Cortex-M microcontrollers with specific details on the TM4C123, and MSP432E4. Most of the topics can be run on any of these microcontrollers. Although the examples designed are specific for the TM4C123, it will be possible to use these books for other ARM derivatives.