The design of a Maximum Power Tracking (MPPT) controller for a solar photovoltaic system is proposed utilizing a buckconverter topology. Solar panel voltage and current are continuously monitored by a closed-loop microcontroller based control system, and the duty cycle of the buck converter will be continuously adjusted to extract the maximum power. MATLAB Simulation will be used for the initia...

Resistive sensors configured as Wheatstone bridges are primarily used to sense pressure, temperature or loads. An external A/D converter (ADC) and a digitally Programmable Gain Amplifier (PGA) can easily be used to convert the difference voltage from these resistor bridge sensors to usable digital words for manipulation by the microcontroller. When the PGA is used in this system, the other chan...

This book is about the Arduino microcontroller and the Arduino concept. The visionary Arduino team of Massimo Banzi, David Cuartielles,Tom Igoe, Gianluca Martino, and David Mellis launched a new innovation in microcontroller hardware in 2005, the concept of open source hardware. Their approach was to openly share details of microcontroller-based hardware design platforms to stimulate the sharin...

Embedded systems in robotics or mechatronics need flexibility since they are working in dynamic environments. We consider an embedded modular multi-microcontroller system. Each module includes a microcontroller and special purpose hardware like a motor driver. Usually a change of the embedded software necessitates a direct access to all the devices (microcontrollers) to reload the code. To over...

This paper describes the design and development of a low cost Data Acquisition System (DAS) using PIC18LF4553 microcontroller for real time data acquisition. The designed DAS has 4 analog input channels having 12-bit resolution and was interfaced through the USB port of the PC. The interface to the PC is basically a USB based virtual serial port emulation using FT232R, a USB to serial UART inte...

The focus of this paper is to present a low-cost and simple approach to designing intelligent home system using the concept of mobile-to-machine and machine-to-mobile communication. First, we develop a general purpose electronic circuit design that can control and monitor a variety of home appliances with interface that can be plugged into GSM handset unit. The design based on PLC comprises mic...

This paper presents the design and development of a low power embedded system for the measurement and monitoring of physiological parameters like body temperature, respiration, blood pressure and ECG. The design is developed around a low power microcontroller MSP430 from Texas Instruments. A wireless sensor module is used to transfer the data from microcontroller to the PC and a graphical user ...