Features

I always believed that the Arduino is a development board and is its microcontroller, the ATMega328 is the one meant to be featured in actual embedded systems projects.  Nevertheless, no one can deny the advantages of boards like these as they make prototyping and debugging much easier. In this post, …

As a lifelong PIC fan, I was super thrilled when Microchip sent me a free unit of their Curiosity HPC development board. I’ve been working on PICs for years by just mounting them on breadboards and using PICKit to flash programs. This takes time and so when I’m faced with …

Last time I featured DFRobot’s Bluno M0, an arduino compatible board with embedded bluetooth chip. Now, I will write about the Bluno M3, an STM32 powered board which strikingly looks similar to the M0. Is it the same board or does it offer more?

I2C, or Inter-integrated Circuit, is a communications protocol common in microcontroller-based systems, particularly for interfacing with sensors, memory devices and liquid crystal displays. Similar to SPI, it’s a synchronous protocol because it uses a clock line. The I2C protocol, however, uses less pins and is a much more robust standard.

SPI, short for Serial Peripheral Interface, is a communication protocol common in microcontroller systems. Sensors, liquid crystal displays and memory cards are examples of devices that use SPI. It is faster than both UART and I2C although it also has its disadvantages.

There are a lot of Arduino compatible boards but most of them are essentially clones. These clones are cheaper, yes, but why buy them if you can have boards that can give you MORE. A LOT MORE.

Maybe you’ve used an HD4480-based LCD before (pictured) and you know that it requires a potentiometer for adjusting contrast.  Is there a way to remove this potentiometer completely?

I got plenty of questions regarding microcontroller power outputs and requirements especially for popular ones like PIC or the Arduino.  So I decided to answer all of them in this post. Technically, Raspberry Pi and BeagleBone Black are not microcontrollers (I like to call them microcomputers) but I decided to …