Start • Typical MCU Tasks • Microcontroller Mode • Watch This! • Put the GP-22050 to Work • Closing the Lid • Sources and PDF

TYPICAL MCU TASKS

After realizing that I actually come into physical contact with microcontrollers on a daily basis, I pondered as to why. Let’s take a closer look at the mess on my desk.

I have a microcontroller-controlled board that converts an incoming analog signal to its digital equivalent and then uses digital filter algorithms to alter the digitized analog signal’s frequency components before spitting it back out through a PWM channel. This little digital filter board also uses digital control via its on-board microcontroller to spin the virtual knobs on a couple of digital potentiometer ICs, which determine the band-pass frequencies of the board’s op-amp-based analog I/O stages.

Stacked up below the digital filter board is a miniature wireless Ethernet node. The microcontroller on this wireless communications node relays digital commands and data to its onboard 802.11b CompactFlash radio card. In addition to handling the communications channel, the microcontroller also transfers digital commands and data between a temperature/humidity IC and the wireless Ethernet interface.

The aforementioned boards don’t relate to each other in a mission sense, but they do share three things in common. All of the embedded electronic devices I spoke of contain a microcontroller. Each microcontroller on the various boards spews and absorbs zeros and ones. The eruption and consumption of the digital data by each microcontroller is executed in reference to a stable time base or clock.

When you get down to the physical interface of most microcontrollers, you’ll find yourself speaking binary. Even the multifaceted Cypress PSoC, which is enriched with the wonders of programmable analog, has provisions to produce and accept digital signals. Basically, microcontrollers are simply tools that are used to quickly and systematically manipulate zeros and ones to achieve a purpose and ultimately perform a task.

If you can logically move zeros and ones to their proper preallocated locations fast enough and perform a useful task while doing so, you can technically be considered as operating in “microcontroller mode,” even though a physical microcontroller is nowhere to be found.