Archives for: August 2008
A little PWM
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Now that we have most of the fundamentals down and you understand the basics behind microcontrollers, lets have a little fun.
Today's project is a 3 speed PWM(Pulse Width Modified) fan controller.
In this project the user selects the fan level (lo… more »
The Microcontroller
Now that we've covered the basics we can finally get into the main purpose of this blog. From now on we will refer to a microcontroller with the acronym "MCU."
Section 1: The MCU
-So yea, what are they?
A MCU is a small computer on a chip. Most… more »
1001001 SOS
Binary, the language of machine, but why? In circuitry we have two things we can represent data as. We can use a "on" and a "off" meaning, weather there is current flowing or there is not. Traditionally 1 represents an on, or a high and 0 represents an o… more »
Truth tables NEVER lie
So we have diodes, resistors, transistors, capacitors, inducers, and whatnot. So how does this all come together to make computers?
At its heart, a transistor takes an input and provides an output. Alone its a fairly simple logic operation and transis… more »
Semiconduct THIS
Even with the fundamentals laid down, electronics had little place to move in terms of computing. Vacuum tubes were very bulky and ate a lot of electricity to do simple tasks. Early computers took up whole rooms and had the computing power of most modern… more »
Let there be light!
Our modern world would be nothing like it is today without electricity. Electricity has enabled man to create devices that truly work on an atomic scale. We can cram more power into smaller devices with more and more capabilities. What intrigues us most… more »
Hello world!
Welcome to the awesome world of microcontrollers! Lets start things off by talking a little about myself. I am a Freshman at Stony Brook University pursuing a degree in Physics and Computer Engineering. I am mostly self taught on my knowledge on circuitr… more »
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