Return to the Embedded World

 

As a kid, i grew up watching these two cartoons. 

                                                                Click to enjoy the intros.

                                                    Warning: Chills may run through the spine.

In my view these two cartoons exemplify wonderfully the embedded world.

Here is how I view embedded systems.

The computers we are used to, run programs which take inputs usually through mouse and keyboard. The output of the program is seen usually through a monitor.

In the embedded world the analogous to computers are microcontrollers which run programs usually written in C language. They take inputs from various sensors such as buttons, accelerometers, flex sensors, potentiometers etc and the outputs are usually displayed through leds, lcd screens or they drive, motors, servos etc.

In other words in the normal computer world computer does things inside the monitor. In the embedded world computer does actual things in the world such as you see in the cartoons above eg. fly a plane (turbo jet), send exoskeletal weapons from the space  etc. 

Since i studied computer engineering in college there has been a long gap. I will slowly build from small. Before that i need to refresh some concepts. Let's see where we get.