Sponsor's Message

No, I'm not talking about PCs (although they've become ubiquitous too) but those tiny "chips" that have become a part of just about every non-trivial device we own or use.

Your watch, your microwave, your car, your DVD player, your MP3 player, your washing machine -- you name it and the odds are that there's a computer in there somewhere.

But hang on -- while we're still paying big bucks for a desktop or laptop PC, how can it be that all these consumer-electronics items sell for such a low price, despite their onboard computers?

Well the key to the processing power in may of these devices is something called a microcontroller -- a complete computer on a chip.

There are several families of these devices but the most commonplace are the PIC and Atmel brands.

Thanks to these little devices, it becomes possible to incorporate an incredible amount of processing power into a very small amount of space.

In the case of the ATmega128 device you get 128Kbytes of flash-ram, 4Kbytes of static ram, 4Kbytes of EEPROM, 8 channels of 10-bit A/D conversion and 16MIPS of processor power in a package as small as 9mm square.

Readers Say Got something to say about today's column, or want to see what others think?  Visit The Forums

Now some of you are probably saying "What? An 8-bit processor? Just 4K of RAM and 128K of program memory? How can you do anything with that?"

Well the truth is that you're not going to duplicate the power of a desktop PC with this little chip but for many of the more mundane tasks, such as controlling a washing machine or your car's engine, this is more than enough.

What's more, microcontrollers have now become so cheap that it's often more cost-effective to use one of these devices and some software than it is to build a special analog circuit to perform some tasks.

In fact, if you're an electronics enthusiast, these devices empower you to build just about anything you can think of.

From a programming perspective, these things are quite nostalgic -- encouraging you to get stuck in and write some good old assembly code.

To extract the maximum performance from the limited resources available in some of the simpler chips such as the bottom-end of the PIC line, you'll want to brush up on your understanding of machine code concepts, interrupts and other things that may be somewhat foreign to those who cut code in 3/4GLs.

If you're even slightly interested in playing with these cool little chips then you can buy yourself a programmer/prototyping system for about $125 and get stuck in.

It's kind of funny how, even after writing countless megabytes of complex software for powerful processors like the Pentium, going back to basics and cutting a simple microcontroller program still gives me a buzz.

If you used to build electronic stuff (before the advent of the PC) then take a look at these microntrollers -- you might get all excited again.

If you feel that this is a good thing and/or you hold a "geniune affection" for yours truly -- then you are welcome to gift me some money using the buttons provided. In gifting this money you accept that no goods, service or other consideration is offered, provided, accepted or anticipated in return. Just click on the button to gift whatever you can afford. NOTE: PayPal bills in US dollars so don't accidentally gift more than what you were intending :-)

Contacting Aardvark
I'm always happy to hear from readers, whether they're delivering brickbats, bouquets or news tip-offs. If you'd like to contact me directly, please this form. If you're happy for me to republish your comments then please be sure and select For Publication.

Other media organisations seeking more information or republication rights are also invited to contact me.

Just add a couple of lines of JavaScript to your pages and you can get a free summary of Aardvark's daily commentary -- automatically updated each and every week-day.

Aardvark also makes a summary of this daily column available via XML using the RSS format. More details can be found here.

Contact me if you decide to use either of these feeds and have any problems.

Linking Policy
Want to link to this site? Check out Aardvark's Linking Policy.

Did you tell someone else about Aardvark today? If not then do it now!