Micro Controller - What and How to Learn

Some Thing About Electronics

long time back electronics used to be just passive and active components.

Required lot of soldering and testing using multimeter and CROs.

Slowly and gradually software gets embedded into electronics devices making them more complex to design but easy to use and low cost and reliable.

Use of Micro Controllers

Almost every where - some examples are as follows

How Students Learn

At presents students learn from

College - it includes old and obsolete products like 8085 and 8051. The course contents is such that it does not help them in real world.

Training Institutes - There are multiple training institutes and they provide knowledge of more advances components. However they too focus on learning internals and making some example products.

Online - There are multiple tutorials on almost every controller and very useful. The only issue is lack of support in case of problem.

What is my experience.

My experience with students is that while their CV mention few week of training, they still do not know any thing.

They lack creativity or original thinking and any new question and they are stuck up.

They also do not practise.

Students believe that by attending a two (or six weeks) course in summer vacation is sufficient.

Why Practise

How do you learn car driving or even bicycle?

What do you think Sachin Tendulkar does even today?

Practise Cricket or Watch Cricket Match on TV?

Well, if you are looking for a job in embedded, there is no alternative, A few weeks course is not going to impress your prospective employer.

What I recommendBuy an embedded kit. Buy latest. (you do not buy a 5 year old mobile or laptop with windows/98 then why buy a 30 year old micro controller kit) Pick up a product idea. Talk to people around you - say your mother. Ask her what she needs from a product.

Talk to more people, and start making that product.

Make a product so that it can be installed and used.

Example 1 - Street Lights

Light for street lights in your colony switches on and off as per sunset and sunrise time in your area.

At midnight say from 11.30 pm to 5.30 am 50% lights are switched off

Even at evening or morning only 50% lights are on during dusk and dawn time.

Example 2 - health monitor for elderly

Elderly persons are more prone to falls.

More than fall, they find it difficult to raise alarm and call some one at home

A device that can detect sudden fall will alert their family member and they can get immediate help.

Also at night if there is no movement then an alert is raised

More Examples

This is first draft.

I will be adding more examples soon...

About the Author

Vinay Chaddha is 50 year old electronic hobbyist and entrepreneur. He operate from Amity Innovation Incubator at Amity University Campus.

He has developed over 200 commercial products.

Seven of his products are published in EFY during last 14 years as open source projects. Read about him here

About Open.Embedded

This is an initiative of group of professionals, students and hobbyists to share their knowledge among others using low cost open source software.

We think it criminal when students are taught 8085 and 8051 in college when world is moving forward and technology changes are happening every where in the world. Join us at facebook.com/open.embedded Buy low cost kits at stores.ebay.in/openembedded