Skip to Content
AVR Programming
book

AVR Programming

by Elliot Williams
January 2014
Intermediate to advanced
474 pages
13h 28m
English
Make: Community
Content preview from AVR Programming

Chapter 1. Introduction

The first question to ponder is what, exactly, is a microcontroller? Clearly it’s a chunk of silicon, but what’s inside of it?

What Is a Microcontroller? The Big Picture

Rhetorical questions aside, it’s well worth getting the big-picture overview before we dive headfirst into flipping bits, flashing program memory, and beyond.

A Computer on a Chip…

Microcontrollers are often defined as being complete computers on a single chip, and this is certainly true.

At their core, microcontrollers have a processor that is similar to the CPU on your computer. The processor reads instructions from a memory space (in flash memory rather than on a hard drive), sends math off to an arithmetic logic unit (instead of a math coprocessor), and ...

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.

Read now

Unlock full access

More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly

AirBnbBlueOriginElectronic ArtsHomeDepotNasdaqRakutenTata Consultancy Services

QuotationMarkO’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
Julian F.
Head of Cybersecurity
QuotationMarkI wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.
Addison B.
Field Engineer
QuotationMarkI’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.
Amir M.
Data Platform Tech Lead
QuotationMarkI'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Mark W.
Embedded Software Engineer

You might also like

FPGA Programming for Beginners

FPGA Programming for Beginners

Frank Bruno

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781449356484Errata Page