Experience of Teaching the Pic Microcontrollers
Session 1520 EXPERIENCE OF TEACHING THE PIC MICROCONTROLLERS Han-Way Huang, Shu-Jen Chen Minnesota State University, Mankato, Minnesota/ DeVry University, Tinley Park, Illinois Abstract This paper reports our experience in teaching the Microchip 8-bit PIC microcontrollers. The 8-bit Motorola 68HC11 microcontroller has been taught extensively in our introductory microprocessor courses and used in many student design projects in the last twelve years. However, the microcontroller market place has changed considerably in the recent years. Motorola stopped new development for the 68HC11 and introduced the 8- bit 68HC908 and the 16-bit HCS12 with the hope that customers will migrate their low- end and high-end applications of the 68HC11 to these microcontrollers, respectively. On the other hand, 8-bit microcontrollers from other vendors also gain significant market share in the last few years. The Microchip 8-bit microcontrollers are among the most popular microcontrollers in use today. In addition to the SPI, USART, timer functions, and A/D converter available in the 68HC11 [6], the PIC microcontrollers from Microchip also provide peripheral functions such as CAN, I2C, and PWM. The controller-area- network (CAN) has been widely used in automotive and process control applications. The Inter-Integrated Circuit (I2C) has been widely used in interfacing peripheral chips to the microcontroller whereas the Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) function has been used extensively in motor control. After considering the change in microcontrollers and the technology evolution, we decided to teach the Microchip 8-bit microcontrollers. 1 Several major issues need to be addressed before a new microcontroller can be taught: textbook, demo boards, and development software and hardware tools.
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