Microcontrollers and C, the beginning

Purpose

To document my path to relative mastery of microcontroller and their programming with C. The crowning achievement will be a GPS receiver.

C

The programming language per se (for me at least). Perhaps this will be extended with assembler and other languages if there is need.

Microcontrollers

Incredible things.

Approach

After briefly using an arduino uno and their IDE, I wanted more in depth knowledge and control, especially after the analog to digital conversion was not as accurate as there was need for. 

Two of the most prevalent types of MCUs are PIC and AVR. 8-bit is a good starting point. Microchip has small curiosity nano boards, that are cheap, easy to interface and with them comes Microchip's IDE, MPLAB X with a C compiler, XC for the pic.

The PIC18 is what I have begun with. Soon the AtMega will need some attention as well.

MCU boards

• PIC18F57Q43 Curiosity nano evaluation board
  
• ATmega4809 Curiosity nano evaluation board

 

Further equipment

• Breadboards; one large from my study time and one smaller which is on the same plate as an arduino uno. This could be beneficial when it is time to start programming inter-MCU communication.
  
• Various electronic components and ICs.
• Computer.

 

 Setup with the PIC18