About microcontrollers programmable in C?

Question

hey guys i wanted to do a line followin robot with the help of a microcontroller on board. well i have never used a microcontroller before but i want to give it a try, well to begin with i have the basic programming skills in C lang...but is that enough for me to programme a microcontroller???or do i need to know anything extra for programming a microcontroller???and also guys wat microcontroller would you prefer for a beginner like me.....look my specifications low cost....easily programmable....easy handling....

Answer 1

The cheap microcontrollers you would use for this sort of project do not have much program memory, and are best programmed in their own assembly language. That said, even the popular PIC microcomputers can be programmed from a C compiler (see http://microchip.htsoft.com/products/com... You will still need to know how the microcomputer works (setting initial conditions, dealing with interrupts, failing gracefully on power losses) but there is a lot of literature around.

Answer 2

Why place the complexity of C on the microcontroller?

Take a look at the Parallax BASICstamp and (especially) Propeller microcontrollers. They use a version of BASIC and a  language called Spin respectively, which are designed with the precise capabilities of the microcontrollers in mind so they're really efficient.

The Propeller is especially cool because it actually has eight processing cores that can essentially work in parallel very easily.

Answer 3

Programming in C for microcontrollers is normally done on a PC and the code transferred over.   Some kind of set of routines has to be written for each set of hardware (robot) that encodes exactly what has to be sent to the motors to do something and sometimes these are part of the microcontroller subset while other times they are given in C as part of the library.   If not, then assembly language is used.  These give a set of routines like AdvanceRightWheel(int steps )   AdvanceLeftWheel(int steps)

Answer 4

I would go with the PIC microprocessors. They claim to be the #1 8 bit microcontrollers, have a reduced instruction set, lots of upgrades through 32 bit, dsp capability.

I would start with the PIC 2 debug deal:

http://www.microchipdirect.com/productse...

While it's only $50 for the programmer, debugger, and target board, if I were a poor starving student, I would send them an email asking for an educational discount. They are a pretty good company to work with, and they might help you out. Worst case, you could always just pay the $50.

There is a lesser programmer too; it saves $10 or $15, but from personal experience, I assure u that a few bucks for better debugging capability is well worth it.