Simply put, synchronous serial protocols like SPI and I2C have a separate line for timing (the CLK line) while asynchronous protocols like UART (RS232) don’t. The addition of a clock line makes reception timing much easier and thus reduces transmission errors. It is also possible to interconnect more than two …

PIC microcontrollers, obviously, can do more than just light up LEDs or reading button states. Microcontrollers can also communicate with another microcontroller or with other devices like sensors, memory cards, etc. Often the communication is done serially, where data bits are sent one at a time. The microcontroller serial communication …

The SIM800L is a cheap and portable GSM breakout board with all the capabilities of the larger SIM900 shields. In this Arduino SIM800L tutorial, I will help you with using this nifty device. Sending and receiving texts with your Arduino have never been easier!

Displays are almost always a part of any microcontroller project or embedded system. Fortunately, there are cheap LCDs available with a wide support for multiple microcontroller devices. One is the PCD8544-based liquid crystal display, more popularly known as the Nokia 5110/3310 LCD. This Arduino Nokia 3310 LCD interfacing article covers …

For most microcontrollers, the input and output channels are handled by data direction special function registers. AVR microcontrollers call them Data Direction Registers (DDR) while ARM-based STM32 has a group of “GPIO” registers. PICs call them TRIS registers which is supposed to be short for “TRIState”. In this article, we …

If you are looking to have wireless features on your next project and don’t want to spend that much, then an Arduino NRF24L01 solution might be for you. The NRF24L01 by Nordic Semiconductors contains a 2.4 GHz RF transceiver, synthesizer and baseband logic which can be interfaced through SPI. Apparently, …

The “hello world” of microcontroller programming is flashing an LED. As an introduction to Arduino programming, we’ll code several simple Arduino LED sketches; we’ll be blinking an LED, make an LED respond to an input and fade an LED. I’ll also show you how to easily manipulate multiple LEDs and …

Building robots with Arduino starts with knowing how to move objects through motors. There are a lot of types of motors used in microcontroller-based systems: DC motors, stepper motors, and servo motors.  In this Arduino servo motor article, I will discuss what is a servo motor and how to use …

In this Arduino LCD tutorial, you will learn how to display characters (text and numbers) on a 16 x 2 LCD which is very useful in debugging microcontroller projects as well as providing text-based status for your systems.

Before the Arduino became popular, PICs were the go-to microcontroller device for most electronic hobbyists. PICs were cheap and the resources (at that time) were plenty. But then Arduinos came, which offer a much simpler way to code and so only a few now use these microcontrollers. Arduino’s strength relies …