badbyte wroteA good entry to microcontrollers is working with AVR Series from Atmel, they are good to work with since everything is open source.
Agreed, Atmel chips are perfect for hobbyists to use because the software is open source, and the designs of the programming boards for such chips are available on common websites like that of Arduino, an open source programming language targeted for Atmel chips (they use EAGLE for etching their boards). I actually prefer them over the Microchip PICs which sometimes come faulty eventhough they are a little bit cheaper than the Atmel chips.
jadf24 wroteWe'll I'm 17, and I'm more into electronics than programming. I'm currently working on a project that I control a RC car from my laptop. I need to program a PIC microcontroller but don't know how to program it. So my friend whose an electrical engineering student is helping me with it. Anyway I know VB a little C++ and I'm pretty good at coding batch files(I found it interesting like matrix lol but it turned out to be very restrictive and lame)
Anyway, Start the thread I'm either going into Electrical and Computer engineering next year or Mechanical engineering. Enlighten me :p
Sweet project, keep us up to date. If your more interested in electronics, then it's a no brainer: choose Electrical/Computer engineering not Mechanical engineering. If you want a good balance between the two, choose the hybrid specialty Mechatronics engineering: integrating electronics to automize control over mechanical systems (usually through PLCs). If you want to program PICs,
don't go through the hassle of assembly ie MASM programming. Choose a higher level language like microC or Arduino (since you know a littlte C++, it'd be easier to start with C-based programming langauges). A nice language to learn programming PICs with is PICBASIC: it's easy to learn because the commands are basic english-words and with the demo version of Pic BASIC Pro, you can generate an MASM file to use for programming Microchip microcontrollers (it can even be integrated as a compiler on MPLab IDE, the software used to program Microchip PICs).
Great then, we can start with basic building blocks to know before delving into the worlds of microcontrollers (bridge rectifiers, passive and active filters, op-amps and their various combinations, wheatstone bridges, etc...), learn about microcontrollers and their operations (not much, but enough to understand what's inside it and why we need crystal oscillators, that kind of stuff). and then learn how to program PICs with various langauges (high level that is). We can base our learning on some basic circuit designs and maybe even produce a couple of projects while we're at it. This is going to be a fun summer :)
