microcontroller

I2C and SPI are two of the most widely used serial communication buses for embedded systems — and each comes with its own set of advantages and disadvantages. SPI is the faster protocol, but it’s more costly and offers limited scalability. To close this trade-off gap between I2C and SPI in Serial EEPROMs, Microchip Technology has…

STMicroelectronics announced PSA Certified Level-3 and SESIP 3 certifications for its general-purpose secure STM32U585 microcontroller — passing tests for logical, board, and basic physical resistance that confirm a substantial level of cyber protection. With enhanced tamper resistance and software protection, the STM32U585 is also suitable for controlling PIN Transaction Security (PTS) equipment that must satisfy Payment Card Industry…

Maxim Integrated Products and Xailient Inc., a company focused on artificial intelligence (AI) for the edge, have joined forces. The companies have announced that Maxim’s MAX78000 ultra-low power neural-network microcontroller is used to detect and localize faces in video and images with Xailient’s proprietary Detectum neural network. Xailient’s neural network draws 250x lower power (at…

Infineon Technologies has introduced the industry’s first high-voltage microcontroller (MCU) with USB power delivery (USB PD) 3.1 support. The EZ-PD PMG1 (Power Delivery Microcontroller Gen1) is Infineon’s first generation of USB PD MCUs targeting any embedded system that provides or consumes power with high-voltage up to 28 V (140 W). The device supports higher power…

Maxim Integrated Products has unveiled the MAXREFDES178# camera cube reference design, which demonstrates how artificial intelligence (AI) applications — previously limited to machines with large power and cost budgets — can be embedded in space-constrained, battery-powered edge devices. The new MAXREFDES178# enables ultra-low-power internet-of-things (IoT) devices to implement hearing and vision and showcases the MAX78000…

Want to know why your monthly Electricity bills are “so high”? Take a closer look at the Lights or Fans, when a person inside the room leaves the room hastily, He or She unknowingly leaves the Lights switched on.So, what next? The only way for this is Intelligent Automated Home Lighting System. In this system when a person enters the room the tube lights are switched on automatically. The light switches go off automatically when there is no body inside the room. The whole Intelligent Automated Home Lighting System is now at the tip of your motion. As one moves inside the room the bulb switches on and as one leaves the room it switches off.  

STMicroelectronics is helping developers find the right microcontrollers and microprocessors for their projects more quickly and easily with two state-of-the-art mobile applications released on app stores and ST’s website. STM8 Finder and STM32 Finder replace the preceding ST MCU Finder mobile app, leveraging the latest app-design technologies for a robust and convenient user experience. New features include…

STMicroelectronics, a global semiconductor provider, has launched a new low-power Bluetooth module from Lierda Science & Technology Group — a high-tech enterprise that provides IoT system and smart product solutions in China, uses an ST STM32WB55 Bluetooth LE (BLE) microcontroller (MCU). With its stamp-type format, Lierda’s LSD1BT-STWB5500 module is highly integrated yet resistant to interference.…

Renesas Electronics Corporation, a supplier of advanced semiconductor solutions, announced that customers designing with all mainstream Renesas 32-bit MCU families now have access to the Microsoft Azure Real-Time Operating System (RTOS) embedded development suite — including its powerful Azure IoT middleware. Azure RTOS is integrated and available out-of-box in the recently released Flexible Software Package…

What is a Timer A timer is a clock that controls the sequence of an event while counting in fixed intervals of time. It is used for producing precise time delay. Secondly, it can be used to repeat or initiate an action after/at a known period of time. This feature is very commonly used in…

  Interrupt is one of the most important and powerful concepts and features in microcontroller/processor applications. Almost all the real world and real time systems built around microcontrollers and microprocessors make use of interrupts.   What is Interrupt The interrupts refer to a notification, communicated to the controller, by a hardware device or software, on…

The early stage of the Internet of Things (IoT) has already started to change the way we live, do business and make decisions. As costs of controllers, processors, sensors and transmitters decrease, anything that can be given an electronic circuit and has reason to remotely communicate with other systems is a candidate to become “smart.”…

Generally we are listing two words like Microprocessor and Microcontroller in this digital world. Today’s world completely depended on microprocessors and microcontrollers. So we have to know about microprocessor microcontroller. First what is a microprocessor? A Microprocessor is a digital integrated circuit which is used in general computer and having the millions of transistors, resistors and other electronic components incorporate in as single small IC.  The microprocessor is works as CPU (central processing unit) of the computer. The microprocessor is designed to support a set of multiple peripheral like USB ports, video ports, audio ports, network interfaces like Ethernet, WI-Fi, Bluetooth, additional memory interfaces like CD/DVD ROM, magnetic disc drives and SD/MMC external interfaces. 

It is responsibility of design engineer to get the most performance and capability out of the resources available in limited budget and that too for specific application requirements.While the ideas presented here are around Atmel’s 89S52 microcontroller, these can be easily used with all other types of microcontrollers without any changes and configurations. This note discusses two such techniques to save microcontroller IO lines.Usually in order interface 3×2 keys i.e. 6 keys, we will need six IO pins of microcontroller to take inputs.However, in regular practice we usually recommend using matrix scanning method to interface more keys where keys are arranged in row-column format and then can be scanned one by one. In such case, we will need 3 rows and 2 columns (or vice versa) to interface 3×2 keys as shown in figure.

As today world completely depends on the power saving, this prototype will help to decrease the power consumption. Here we are using this circuit for today’s world to control AC 60W bulb using 8-bit microcontroller and we are using the concept of pwm (pulse width modulation) technique to control the 60W load by which we can decrease the light intensity and thus power consumption of the load indirectly got decreased.  The concept is very low such as to decrease the intensity we need to decrease the voltage of AC input. Here we are using a controlling part which consists of a TRIAC to control the AC voltage and also other feature is controlling the frequency of the signal. Keep on reading to find out how the circuit is assembled and put to use. 

This project is going to guide you through making your very own light level detector, using cheap components and also providing compensation in the form of artificial light whenever the ambient light level in the room is low. Additionally, sensitivity adjustment can also be added for more precise systems.The sensor system can be used for a variety of applications such as an automatic stabilizer for light levels at home or at work, or you can just make one as a fun hobby or for a project.The circuit measures the surrounding light using the photodiodes.Photodiodes are connected in parallel for optimum performance,anode of the diodes is connected to the resistor and also to the analog input pin of the arduino board while the cathode is connected to the power supply.Light received by the diodes is given to the arduino in the form of an analog signal,this signal is processed by the inbuilt ADC of the arduino board. The processed signal is then calibrated to form data which maps to a suitable range. 

The Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) is a high speed, synchronous, serial communication standard. This communication protocol is basically a Master – Slave implementation where the master device controls the clock based on which the slave devices operate. The master communicates with a slave or a number of slaves in a system through the SPI bus. The SPI bus requires a minimum of three wires including SDO (Serial Data Out), SDI (Serial Data Input) and SCK (Serial Clock). Since it is a master controller system the SDO is also called MOSI (Master Output Slave Input) and the SDI is also called MISO (Master Input Slave Output). The SPI is a full-duplex high speed communication protocol. The master and slave can transmit and receive data at the same time. The master is the device which generates clock for all these data transmissions. Read  PIC microcontroller tutorial based on PIC18F4550 microcontrollers in which one of the microcontroller acts as a slave transmitter and the other acts as master receiver. With the help of an LCD, this particular project demonstrates the complete data transfer between a master and slave when both the master and slave are transmitting and receiving the data at the same time. 

The Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) is a high speed, synchronous, serial communication standard. This communication protocol is basically a Master Slaveimplementation where the master device controls the clock based on which the slave devices operates. The master can communicates with one or more slave in the system through SPI bus. The SPI bus requires a minimum of three wires i.e. a SDO (Serial Data Out), SDI (Serial Data Input) and SCK (Serial Clock). Since it is a master controller system the SDO is also called MOSI (Master Output Slave Input) and the SDI is also called MISO (Master Input Slave Output).The SPI is a full-duplex high speed communication protocol. The master and slave can transmit and receive data at the same time. The master generates clock for all these data transmissions.The SPI is special because it is simple and easy to implement in the hardware. The article explores the SPI hardware module of the PIC18F4550 microcontroller. This project will help in better understanding of   the SPI protocol in detail. 

The EEPROM (ELECTRICALLY ERASABLE PROGRAMMABLE READ ONLY MEMORY) is a very useful memory which can be used for storing data. The data storing and retrieving from any EEPROM memory is very simple compared to other kind of memories. As the name suggest the memory is electrically programmable and hence the data will be sustained in the memory until it is electrically erased or reprogrammed.There are lots of EEPROM chips available most of them are easy to interface with a microcontroller. It would be even better if the microcontroller itself has a built-in EEPROM. The microcontroller used in this project is PIC18F4550 and it also has an inbuilt EEPROM memory other than the flash memory. The data can be easily stored into or retrieve using simple codes. The PIC18F4550 has 256 bytes of internal EEPROM memory.The internal EEPROM of microcontrollers are very useful to store important data regarding their operation. They are used to store data like previous status, last log in/out time, last data received before shutting down or power failure.