Your Tool Box
The Toolbox is your collection of tools and skills to get the work done. The requirements are varied as detailed below.
The tools needed are varied and may be a literal soldering iron, pliers, and cutters. The tools also extend to the electronic equipment needed for example your programmer.
While learning for the sake of learning is a noble endeavor, you will learn best when you have a problem to solve. A problem is the application, for example, a Keypad lock, a Humidity sensor, or a wireless node in an IoT network. Apply what you are learning to a project and you will learn faster and develop focussed and honed skills.
An internet search will reveal many project ideas from simple, to practical to exotic where an unexpected feature of an embedded device is leveraged for a unique idea.
The Hardware you use may be a custom board, or development board or some other form of hardware. Hardware is essential as the MCU is a tangible element in the application and it runs and supports the software.
The software you write will eventually be in the form of a hex file before it can be flashed to the device. Whether you write in assembler, in C, Basic, or Pascal the code compiles down to the hex file.
The HEX file is loaded onto the device using a programmer called a PICKIT, and this is an additional piece of hardware you need. The PICKIT connects to your hardware using the ICSP header and the code is flashed to the device. The term flashed is derived from the type of memory which is called Flash Memory.
It does take time to populate your toolbox with everything needed. The toolbox itself is a combination of the literal and the figurative. Our experience and know-how, along with intuition in getting things done are essential tools that only you can develop through practicing and working on your skills.
When developing your project, you will use a toolchain (Development Toolchain๏ปฟ) that is made up of your development board, how you program the board, and the compiler (MikroC๏ปฟ) used.
