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Everybody who is not living as a hermit in a cave in the woods has some form of interaction with microcontrollers nowadays. Often, you are not even aware of it, but most devices in our daily life (microwave oven, coffee machine, smart phone, car, washing machine, heating, garage door, elevator control ...) have at least one microcontroller "implanted" to control the hardware. The result goes by the name of an "embedded system".

In our microcontroller practical course for beginners, you will learn how you can realize your own projects with a microcontroller even without great experience in electronics and programming languages. When googling on the internet you will find many reports of people who managed to develop and build an automatic fish feeding system for their carp pond, a light barrier for counting people, a temperature and humidity controller for their trout smoking oven or home brewery, an alcohol tester or a snow height measuring device with an Arduino® microcontroller board without any previous knowledge. For the model builder, the microcontroller is the universal tool for spicing up his models. For students and their teachers, the microcontroller offers a great means of implementing their ideas in view of the current particularly intensive promotion of the MINT subjects (mathematics, information technology, natural sciences and technology) in schools.

For the realization of our projects, we use the Arduino IDE, a software development environment that can be downloaded free of charge from the Internet to your own PC and that contains the entire software package you need for your own microcontroller project:

We write our programs ("apps") using the Arduino IDE editor on the PC, translate them into the bits and bytes that the microcontroller understands using the IDE's built-in compiler, and load them into the microcontroller's memory via a USB cable. To create our programs we do not even need to know the relatively complicated inner workings of a microcontroller, because the "Arduino concept" supports us with many freely available libraries (comparable with an "App Store") to control the internal components of the microcontroller. These libraries contain quasi finished "software packages", so-called functions, which we can integrate into our programs like a "black box".

We will realize our projects on the Elektor Arduino Nano Training Board MCCAB, a printed circuit board that is connected to the PC via a USB cable and that contains, in addition to an Arduino® microcontroller module, all the components needed for our exercises, such as light-emitting diodes, switches, buttons, acoustic signal transmitters, etc. This microcontroller exercise system can also query or control external sensors, motors or modules.

The emphasis of the course is on practical exercises, because we will acquire the necessary knowledge by "learning by doing". However, we cannot do without theory, so in the front part of the book we find the necessary basics of the hardware and software of a microcontroller system. But then follows the extensive practical part, which is kept quite simple at first. However, with each subsequent exercise, new hardware and software components are added, each of which is explained in detail. Thus, the beginner gets step by step a constantly increasing level of knowledge of the various possibilities, which a microcontroller offers.

How should you use this book? An absolute beginner in the field of electronics and programming should work through this book from beginning to end, to build up a foundation of knowledge first before starting the practical part of the course. However, if you already have some prior knowledge and are one of those people who tend to switch on a new device right away and experiment with it, and only refer to the corresponding chapter in the theory section if necessary, you can also start with chapter 4 – the practical part of the book.

Another option is to work through the numerous exercises first. If you can solve the given tasks without problems, you can skip the corresponding section – at least for the time being.

However, in all cases, you should first carefully study the operating instructions of the Elektor Arduino Nano Training Board MCCAB (see section 2.8) before using it for the first time to avoid possible damage.

Thanks to the Arduino concept, even laymen can realize their own ideas. This is all the more remarkable when you consider that a really intensive treatment of the topic of "microcontrollers" requires a sound knowledge of computer science, programming and electronic circuitry. It is not for nothing that training or studies in this field take several years.

With this Arduino practical course, you will already build up enough knowledge to be able to realize your first projects yourself. You will create the basis for an efficient working with the fascinating possibilities of the Arduino world, because you learn the elementary basics of hardware and programming in the C programming language.

If you want to go deeper and learn more about this fascinating topic – and everyone will, once he has "tasted blood" after the first successes – you can continue with the soon to be published continuation of the Arduino practical course (bibliography [16]), in which we will get down to the "nitty-gritty". In addition to a deeper introduction to the C language, we will realize projects in which we can, for example, query sensors, measure physical quantities, control the microcontroller on the Elektor Arduino Nano Training Board MCCAB via Bluetooth with the Smartphone, even build a mini storage oscilloscope and much more.

And now I wish all inquisitive people much success in working through this book and solving the set exercise tasks.

Wolfgang Trampert