Designing Embedded Hardware

Part III. Peripherals and Interfacing

So far, we have seen how to design the core part of a computer, based upon a processor, support components, and memory. In Part III, we will look at various forms of I/O and how we can use them to connect our embedded computer to the real world.

In Chapter 9, we will see how to add additional peripherals using two simple interfaces found in many embedded processors.

Chapter 10 shows us how to connect our embedded system to other computers using serial interfaces. We’ll see how to implement an RS-232C serial port and learn how we can use this to interface our embedded machines to PCs, terminals, and modems. We’ll also look at RS-422, a more robust type of serial interface, and finally we’ll see how to communicate with light using IrDA.

Chapter 11 extends these concepts, and we learn how to add network interfaces to our designs. We will look at three networks: RS-485, CAN, and Ethernet.

Chapter 12 covers interfacing to the analog world. We look at the basic principles of sampling an analog signal, and then we’ll see how we can amplify a very small analog signal prior to sampling. We’ll take a look at analog-to-digital conversion and then how to interface some simple sensors to our embedded system. We’ll see how to measure temperature, light, pressure, vibration, and magnetic fields. We’ll also see how to use a technique known as quadrature encoding to measure the angular position of a rotating object. Finally, we’ll look at how we can convert a ...