[SOLVED] Communication of microcontroller

[Abul Basar]

Hi. I am a student of Diploma in Engineering Electrical Technology. So i haven’t so much knowledge about microcontroller. I am learning about microcontroller and i am confused about why microcontroller need to communicate? Why serial port is important? Why microcontroller communicate with serial port? And whats the difference between I/O port and serial port?

 

[barry]

A microcontroller doesn't NEED to communicate; it depends on the application. You may have a microcontroller that controls the speed of a motor, for example. There's no need for that uC to communicate with any external system. But a microcontroller may be used in a system that, say, has an LCD display which uses a serial port to receive display data; that microcontroller then NEEDS a serial port.

A serial-port IS an I/O port. It's just an I/O port with a dedicated function. If you look in detail, you'll see that most uC's have pins that may function as either general purpose I/O or as a serial-port.

 

[Akanimo]

Exactly as Barry has said. MCUs have I/Os. Each I/O can be used configured for a particular function (a list of which is usually provided by the chip manufacturer). Some of the can provide the Serial Port functionality.

Let's assume that for some reason you are using an external ADC, that provides the provides the data via SPI, I2C, I2S or whatever. Then the MCU needs to communicate with the external ADC in the applicable communication protocol in order be able to fetch that data from the ADC.

So, it's based on need, just as Barry has said.

 

[KlausST]

Hi,

I expected an electrical engineering student to know that
Ethernet, USB, I2C, SPI, IrDA, UART, CAN, HDMI, VGA, S/PDIF, PS/2...
...all serial interfaces

You should know at least a few of them and what they are used for.

In the Internet search there are overviews and detailed information.
Many use cases are discussed here in the forum.

Klaus

 

[doraemon]

Hello!

Looks like you entered the engineering school last September, right?
You cannot learn everything from books. Buy a microcontroller board. As you are
aiming at engineering, don't buy an Arduino, buy a board that you will try to program
in C / C++ from scratch. Then:
- Write a program that blinks an LED at a given blinking period (that's the microcontroller's Hello World).
- Do the same with a timer instead of a loop.
- Plug a LCD onto your board (might be good to also buy a breadboard with wires)
- Measure something, (example temperature from the internal µC sensor) and display it
- Buy another board, connect it to the firs with an UART port
- Put the display on the second board, measure the temperature with the first and send it serially to the 2nd.

Don't misunderstand me: don't neglect learning from books, that's the base. Learn from books at daytime,
in the university and program at night.
And of course you can ask questions anytime here with specific issues.

Dora.

 

[tepalia02]

Hi. I am a student of Diploma in Engineering Electrical Technology. So i haven’t so much knowledge about microcontroller. I am learning about microcontroller and i am confused about why microcontroller need to communicate? Why serial port is important? Why microcontroller communicate with serial port? And whats the difference between I/O port and serial port?

To understand microcontroller, you will have to understand the terms PIN,PORT,Registors etc. I/O ports means Input/OUTPUT ports. These are associated with the physical pins of the microcontroller. For example, if you take a look at the datasheet of ATMEGA328P, you'll see that its 28 pins are divided into 3 PORTS. Port B, Port C, and Port D.

Introduction to ATmega328 - The Engineering Projects

Today, I am going to share the most important and the most common topic i.e. Introduction to ATmega328. ATmega-328 is basically an ....

www.theengineeringprojects.com

Serial communication is needed when you want to establish communication between your computer and the microcontroller. If you want to print any data from the microcontroller to your computer, you'll need to use serial communication protocol. By the same communication protocol, you can also give commands to the microcontroller from your computer. Some other sensors and modules also support serial communication protocol. Such as fingerprint sensors, GSM modules etc. To interface your microcontroller with such devices, you need serial communication too.