Most people assume that building their own custom electronic devices must be hideously difficult and expensive. However, it doesn’t have to be either. Thanks to the proliferation of microcontroller-based kits designed to teach users about electronics, building custom electronics has never been easier.
What Are Microcontrollers?
A microcontroller is a simple computer on a circuit board. Common examples of microcontrollers include the Raspberry Pi and the Arduino. You can find numerous electronics available online that use these devices as their core. For example, you can buy game consoles on Amazon capable of playing retro games via emulation on a Raspberry Pi.
There are numerous industrial and manufacturing uses for more sophisticated microcontrollers than these.
What Can You Do With Them?
There are few limits to what you can do with microcontrollers. The only real limit is your imagination. If you purchase a prebuilt microcontroller like a Raspberry Pi, you are limited to what that microcontroller can do. However, you can design your own microcontrollers and have them custom-made.
If you want to go down this route and start experimenting with custom microcontrollers, you will need to learn about printed circuit boards. Look for additional components to combine with PCBs to build your own microcontrollers. You can use Octopart to search for datasheets that contain detailed information about components. They can also connect you with potential suppliers for those components.
What Do You Need To Get Started?
The Raspberry Pi is the most popular starters kit for getting to grips with microcontrollers. There are others on the market. Some of these other options are more specialized. The Raspberry Pi’s designers intended for it to be a more general microcontroller that could run Linux.
If you are going to use the Raspberry Pi as your starting point, you will also need to learn some programming. If you have no experience of coding, Code Academy is a great place to start. They offer a variety of languages and give you detailed information about the use cases for each one.
Taking It Further
There is always scope for you to get more serious about building electronics. You can order virtually anything online and even have components custom-manufactured on demand. The possibilities for what you can do with microcontrollers are almost endless. You could even take it from being a hobby to being the foundations of a legitimate business. There are numerous business opportunities for people who can design microcontrollers.
You will find all the software that you need to begin designing your own PCBs online. There are also numerous high-quality tutorials for you to follow. Don’t worry if you know nothing about circuitry or electronics. You can go from knowing nothing about either to learning everything you need to build your own complex electronic devices on your own steam if you are determined.
Building your own electronics is much easier than many people realize. The information and tools that you need to do so are freely available. Once you know what you are doing, it is an enriching pursuit.
Thank you for this interesting post. Also looks good about the prebuilt Microcontroller named Raspberry Pi and its terms.I really appreciate and liked this post.