Microcontroller System: From concept to printed board

A Microcontroller Systems course is now a days very important to electronic engineers. In this work, the development of laboratory classes to such course is presented. In these classes the objective is to provide the students with the skills necessary to acquire an analog signal, convert it to a digital signal able to be handled by a microprocessor and then convert the digital signal again to an analog signal to be used by a continuous system and effectively build the proposed system. Software tools are used to simulate the circuit designed, to test the program to be run in the microprocessor and to design the printed board layout on which the designed and simulated circuit will be built. The students, working in teams of two, effectively build the proposed system. When the system is built, each team of students must proposes a project to be developed using the boards already manufactured. These projects could be luminescence control, motor velocity control or another. Therefore, each team must study the system to be controlled, the delay time necessary to the signal processing and, eventually, build some physical structure to support the devices on the analog system. The success of this hands on process is verified by the enthusiasm of the students during the process of effectively build a physical system.