Exploring C for Microcontrollers: A Hands on Approach

If we accept the premise that an embedded engineer is made rather than born, then how does one go about making a good one? The authors ofthisbookExploring C for Microcontrollers: A Hands-on Approach are certainly “good ones”. Not only do they explore some of the in?uences thatshapedthemselvesbuttheyalsotrytoshape“would-be”embedded engineers. Research and developmental activities in embedded systems has grown in a signi?cant proportion in the recent past. Embedded so- ware design is not new to the world, but with the changing time, it has gained considerable momentum in the recent past, and many young engineers are strongly inclined to pursue their future in this ?eld. The book is mainly targeted to these engineers who would like to understand in great depth the synergetic combination of hardware and software. The book is divided into eight chapters. Chapter 1 introduces a brief background about micro-controllers and explains how they are emb- dedintoproductscommerciallyavailableinthemarkettoemphasizethe importance of these in the daily life of mankind. It also gives an insight into the architectural details and embedded system concepts for s- dents’ projects to motivate them into this exciting ?eld. The rest of the bookconcentratesonsoftwaredevelopment. Theintegrateddevelopment environment (IDE) is introduced in Chapter 2. Again the screen shots and step-by-step procedure will certainly make the students and en- neers fully understand the development process. Chapter 3 di?eren- ates the embedded C paradigm from the conventional ANSI C. Again the authors explain how to successfully overcome the memory and time constraints while developing an embedded C program.

The market is flooded with numbers of good books on Embedded Systems designed especially with the most popular MCS51 family. These books are traditional in nature i.e. they start with the routine architectural features of 8051, description of registers, ports, interrupts etc. Most of these things are already covered in the device data sheet and application notes. In this book all such routine things are skipped. The focus is on programming microcontrollers, to be specific MCS-51 family in ‘C’ using Keil IDE. Exploring C for Microcontrollers presents seventeen live case studies apart from the many basic programs organized around every on-chip resource like port, time/counter, interrupt , serial I/O etc. Rather than introducing the underpinning theory or reproducing lengthy data sheets, our approach is "learning-through-doing" and one that appeals to busy electronics designers. The ‘C’ codes given are well supported by easy to understand comments wherever required. Mastering the basic modules and hands on working with the projects will enable to grasp the basic building blocks for most 8051 programs. Whether you are a student using the MCS-51 family of microcontrollers for your project work or an embedded systems programmer, this is a book that will give you a kick-start in using and understanding the most popular microcontroller.

Authors through their interaction with the undergraduate, postgraduate students as well as industry professionals have found that such a book is a need of the microcontroller community interested in C programming. The book will bridge the gap between the microcontroller hardware experts and the C programmers.