Magic Microcontroller

WHAT IS A MICROCONTROLLER

Microcontroller is a actually a small computer developed on a single integrated circuit. Microcontroller is a combination of one or more Microprocessor and a small memory unit. Microprocessors do all the logical operations with the help of memory addresses. These logical operations leads to control one or more peripherals. The logical operations are programmable. There are some input ports and some out put ports. Input ports can receive inputs from users or can read inputs from one or more sensors. It may react through an interrupt which the MCU (microcontroller unit) listens on certain ports.

WHERE THE MCUs ARE USED

The MCUs are used in most of automated processes. From switching on/off street lights automatically at certain times of day-night circles to automatic opening and closing of the door of a gateway, from the operation lift in a multistoried building to the remote controlled toys. Every the automation us done easily with the application Microcontroller.

There are different kinds of microcontrollers available. Some of these are Atmega, Attiny, 8051, 8052 etc.

Our concern of applications are 8051 and Atmega based Arduino boards.

8051

8051 series of MCUs contains microcontrollers like at89c51, at89c52, st89s51, at89s52 etc. These microcontrollers are 40 pin micros. It has four ports P0, P1, P2, P3. Each port address an eight bit register. Thus each bit of port P0 is addressed as P0.0, P0.1, P0.2.....P0.7 and each bit of port P1 is addressed as P1.0....P1.7 and so on. Pin 9 of the 8051 is designated as the reset pin. And two pins , pin 18 and 19 are designated for the outside crystal clock pulse. Pin 31 ia to be connected to Vcc along with the pin 40. Pin 20 is connected to the ground. There are two interrupt pins designated for accepting outside interrputs. These pins are P3.2 and P3.3.

Arduino boards

These are Atmega based boards which implements mostly Atmega168 microcontrollers. 

PROGRAMMING 8051

8051 can be programmed both in C language as well as in low level assembly languages. We can use programming environments like Small Device C Compilar (SDCC) as well as Keil microVision. The C programs are written, debugged and compiled and .hex files are produced at the end. Microcontrollers are burned (programmed) with these hex files with a special 8051 burner software driver using a 8051 burner board from vegarobokit. The burner software is from Willar.com. There are other 8051 burner devices like one from Robosoftlabs.com, .hex files can be written to 8051 using this device with any usb flush burner like ProgISP. 

PROGRAMMING ARDUINO

There are different versions of Arduino boards like Arduino Uno, Arduino pro, Arduino pro mini etc. There is a special programming environment Arduino IDE for prgramming Arduino boards. Many predefine software library packages are there. Program files produced have .ino extension.  The boards are burned ( programmed) with this IDE software itself.

subhra.mukherjee.kol@gmail.com