Embedded Programming

Embedded Programming is the dominant methodology of for programming the microcontrollers. Embedded programming involves the programming small computers that tend to drive devices. Here, this week is all about embedded programming.

Assignment of the week:

Group Assignment

  • Compare the performance and development workflows for other architectures

    • Following are a few different microcontroller architectures available in the market

    They are differentiated on the basis of their operation at the lower level. While 8051, AVR and PIC come in 8-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit, the ARMs generally come in 32-bit and even 64-bit. The 8051, AVR and PIC work closer with the I/O peripherals and can be lower power and faster as a result.

  • 8051

    • The Intel MCS-51 (also known as 8051) is a CISC architecture. These are available in 8-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit microcontrollers. 8051 silicon IP cores are typically smaller size, lower power compared to ARM Cortex-M and MIPS processors. They are used in everything from USB flash drives to washing machines and complex wireless communications systems-on-chip.

  • AVR

    • AVR is a family of microcontrollers developed by Atmel that use the RISC processors. AVR are most commonly used in the Arduino line of open source board designs. These are available in 8-bit tinyAVR, megaAVR and XMEGA. AVR32 is the 32-bit offering, which was intended to compete with ARM processors. These are not compatible with the original ARM and include additional SIMD and DSP instructions as well as audio and video processing features. One of the nice features of most AVR models is that they can reserve a bootloader region to store re-programming code. The code can then re-program through any interface available.

  • PIC

    • PIC stands for Peripheral Interface Controller. It is a family of microcontrollers developed by Microchip with a wide variety of options available. They are not strictly RISC processors as they differ very slightly in their operation. The product range includes the 8-bit PIC10, PIC12, PIC 16 and PIC18, the 16-bit PIC24 and dsPIC and the 32-bit PIC32MX, PIC32MZ, PIC32MM and PIC32MK. The 8-bit range focuses on lower cost, the dsPIC focuses on digital signal processing. The PIC32 series of microcontrollers uses the MIPS32-M4K core technology, which is a 32-bit RISC architecture. MIPS is a direct competitor to the ARM processors covering all types of applications in home entertainment, embedded and networking products, mobile, wearable and IoT devices.

  • RISC and CISC Architectures

    • RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer) performs more instructions with lower cycles as compared to CISC architectures. CISC processors include the Intel x86 and 8051, Motorola 68000 and Zilog Z80 families.One of the key advantages to RISC is the load/store architecture which separates memory access and ALU operations (arithmetic logic unit). This improves cost, power consumption and heat dissipation, making them desirable for light, battery operated devices. RISC processors can be found in the ARM, AVR and PIC microcontrollers.

    Individual Assignments

  • Read a microcontroller datasheet
  • Program your board to do something, with as many different programming languages and programming environments as possible

    • In this task, I used atmega32U4 microcontroller in my circuit board. The datasheet can be found here.

    Pin configuration

    Few points which I read in datasheet are:

    In this week task I designed a board for 'Arduino Leonardo' by using Atmega32U4 as main IC. To design this, I searched many schematics for board and read datasheet of the main Ic thoroughly, and, tried different sketches on page for connectivity and I/Os. In this board, I will practice for my final projects logic gates. The schematics and other necessary images are listed below:

    Eagle Schematic layout of the circuit


    Eagle Board layout of the circuit, and Exported monochrome image for traces


    images for drills and interior border


    Generating .rml file for traces


    Generating .rml files for drills and interior border


    Milled circuit


    lines connected to each other, can be seen in yellow circle. Disconnect wrong connected paths using 'cutter', now no more wrong connections are over there. And board is ready to solder.


    Bill of Material (BoM)


    Soldering the board

    Soldering is became my favourite job. Now, I love soldering the tiny components. Here, in this board, it was my first time in FabLab to solder an IC which comprises of 44 pins, yes, I am talking about 'Atmega32U4'. For be on safe side to not connect wrong connections of soldering the IC, I used "wax", which prevents paths to not connect to their neighbour paths.

    Soldering the components to the board....All required components are soldered except crystal oscillator.


    Debugging the board

    This is the time for checking the board, that which components are getting proper source and which are not. Here, for this process I used digital multimeter. I check the connections of all ground parts in the board, then checked connections of VCC, in the same way checked the connections of each and every pin of atmega32U4 IC. I found all connections in good health, no two different wires/paths were connected to each other. So, the I proceed the next step that was Up the circuit, or in other words to burn bootloader the circuit board through a programmer.

    In debugging process


    Burn boot loader successfully, here I soldered 20 MHz crystal as I have no 16 MHz crystal oscillator in SMD package.


    My Laptop is recognizing my board as 'Arduino Leonardo'. I desoldered the 20 MHz oscillator and soldered 16 MHz Oscillator by drilling two holes on the specific pads by using hand drill. Because, the board was not recognized in my laptop in the presence of 20MHz oscillator.


    Here I created a GUI (Graphical User Interface) for LED blink status using python. The codes of Python and Arduino are given below:

    Arduino code for blinking of the LED
    // Nadir Ali
    // FABLAB Khairpur Sindh Pakistan
    // Week 09, Embedded Programming
    // FAB Academy 2018

    char serialData;
    int pin = 13;
    void setup() {
    pinMode(pin,OUTPUT);
    Serial.begin(9600);
    }
    void loop() {
    if(Serial.available() > 0){
    serialData = Serial.read();
    Serial.print(serialData);
    if(serialData == '1'){
    digitalWrite(pin, HIGH);
    }
    else if (serialData == '0'){
    digitalWrite(pin, LOW);
    } } }

    Python code for GUI of blinking of the LED
    # Nadir Ali
    # FABLAB Khairpur Sindh Pakistan
    # Week 09, Embedded Programming
    # FAB Academy 2018

    from tkinter import *
    root = Tk() #Makes the window
    root.wm_title("LED Control Panel") #Makes the title that will appear in the top left
    root.config(background = "#FFFFFF") #sets background color to white
    #widgets:
    #Left Frame and its contents
    leftFrame = Frame(root, width=200, height = 600)
    leftFrame.grid(row=0, column=0, padx=10, pady=2)
    #Right Frame and its contents
    rightFrame = Frame(root, width=200, height = 600)
    rightFrame.grid(row=0, column=1, padx=10, pady=2)
    #Canvas for drawing circles
    circleCanvas = Canvas(rightFrame, width=100, height=100, bg='white')
    circleCanvas.grid(row=1, column=0, padx=10, pady=2)
    #Logging LED on/off status
    LEDLog = Text(rightFrame, width = 30, height = 10, takefocus=0)
    LEDLog.grid(row=3, column=0, padx=10, pady=2)
    #Labels
    firstLabel = Label(leftFrame, text="LED Toggle")
    firstLabel.grid(row=0, column=0, padx=10, pady=2)
    secondLabel = Label(rightFrame, text="Status History")
    secondLabel.grid(row=2, column=0, padx=10, pady=2)
    thirdLabel = Label(rightFrame, text="LED Visual Status")
    thirdLabel.grid(row=0, column=0, padx=10, pady=2)
    #Drawing circles for the LED visual status
    def grnCircle():
    circleCanvas.create_oval(20, 20, 80, 80, width=0, fill='green')
    LEDLog.insert(0.0, "On\n")
    def whtCircle():
    circleCanvas.create_oval(19, 19, 81, 81, width=0, fill='blue')
    LEDLog.insert(0.0, "Off\n")
    import serial
    import time
    #Open serial port to the board
    arduino = serial.Serial(port = 'com3', baudrate = 9600, writeTimeout = 0)
    time.sleep(1) # waiting for initialization...
    print("initialising")
    #Turning LED on
    def LEDOn():
    arduino = serial.Serial(port = 'com3', baudrate = 9600, writeTimeout = 0)
    arduino.write('1'.encode())
    grnCircle()
    #Turning LED off
    def LEDOff():
    arduino = serial.Serial(port = 'com3', baudrate = 9600, writeTimeout = 0)
    arduino.write('0'.encode())
    whtCircle()
    #LED on/off buttons
    newButton = Button(leftFrame, text="LED On", command=LEDOn)
    newButton.grid(row=2, column=0, padx=10, pady=2)
    newButton = Button(leftFrame, text="LED Off", command=LEDOff)
    newButton.grid(row=3, column=0, padx=10, pady=2)
    arduino.close() #close serial port
    root.mainloop() #loop to update GUI

    LED status in python GUI, directly connected with board too, by clicking 'ON' the LED button in GUI and LED which is connected in D13 of Arduino leonardo illuminate.


    Video which shows the working condition of the board and also handles in python based GUI.


    Learning Outcomes

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