Universal development board for education in embedded systems

Design and programming of embedded systems require skills that need training and practice. Usually these activities are performed using a development board equipped with a specific microcontroller and a software environment for firmware development. The main problem of such approach is its focus on only one device type - other microcontroller families require other development boards. This aspect becomes important in a university laboratory, where students have to work with different types of embedded systems. For example, in our department of Electronic Technology, three8-bit and one 16-bit microcontroller families are used in different projects. Each microcontroller type requires its own development board with its own set of peripheral devices; this is a waste of resources and so came the idea to use the same set of peripherals on a motherboard and to plug in a daughterboard with a specific microcontroller and its associated circuitry. One motherboard and three daughter boards were designed and tests were performed.