Wired World: A Beginner's Guide to Embedded Electronic Interfaces

Think embedded electronics are hard? Think again. Pull-ups? Pull-downs? PWMs? Open drain? Push-Pull? These terms might sound foreign when starting with embedded. In fact, you might run into them as soon as you try to configure your first microcontroller. Rather than spending hours trying to figure it out this compact ebook will get you there in no time.

About This Book

Embedded electronics are not as complicated as they may sound. Many resources make the mistake of tackling too much at once. This is overwhelming for an embedded beginner and could deter one from proceeding. Moreover, if you want to focus on embedded software, you’re probably not going to design any hardware. Instead, you probably want to focus on understanding what the hardware does. The good news is that in the vast world of electronics, there is a subset of knowledge that covers a huge part of what one needs to get started. This subset is not as complicated as is typically conceived.

Embedded electronics focus on interfacing a microcontroller to the outer world. This translates into using electronics to make outer world inputs and outputs compatible with the microcontroller pins. This book focuses on the most common electronic circuits used to achieve this compatibility. These circuits are not necessarily complicated in nature but rather focus on addressing compatibility issues. Additionally, at the beginning of one’s journey, the goal is not necessarily to design but rather to understand the circuits. This knowledge is most of what an embedded beginner or software developer would need.

Why Did I Create this Book?

I’ve worked with and taught embedded for quite some time. In recent times, I’ve also developed a love for the Rust programming language 🦀 . In fact, I like to refer to myself as an embedded Rustacean. In the time I’ve worked with Rust, I got to hear the struggles of several community members who were new to embedded. It was exciting to see that many existing non-embedded Rustaceans developed a curiosity towards Embedded. This is probably because embedded is mentioned heavily in the Rust context. However, since many did not have a hardware background, I realized they faced an initial electronics hurdle as soon as they tried to configure microcontroller pins. The types of things that a non-embedded software engineer would not typically encounter. Although the information is out there, some expressed needing hours to figure it out. At that point, I figured creating such a resource would help those in need of a compact & quick reference.

Who the Book is For?

This book is ideal for you if you are:

• A Software Engineer interested in embedded

• An embedded Software Engineer curious about hardware

• An embedded beginner

What Background Do I Need?

All you need is a basic understanding of electrical circuits. This includes knowledge of what components like resistors and capacitors are. This is in addition to concepts like Ohm’s Law.

What do I get with this Book?

60 pages in PDF and EPUB Formats21 Exercise Questions11 Interactive Simulations1 Real World Schematic Example