Universal Level 0
What is hardware?
Hardware is the physical medium on which software runs. It allows for software application code to run and provides the application various abilities such as communicating with sensors, battery charging circuits, Bluetooth, WiFi, etc.
How to go about learning hardware?
- Select a project. The best way to get started on hardware is to select a simple project to do and work your way backwards through the various prerequisites.
- Select a specific solution such as STM32, Nordic or Dialog. This will allow you to focus on learning how all the various subsystems work together on a particular implementation and make extrapolation to other products much easier.
- Keep reading. Look into data sheets, visit forums, read blogs and tutorials, ask questions and watch videos. Try to go one level deeper into each concept/subsystem you learn, every week.
What to do when you’re stuck?
Often times in hardware, especially when starting out, you’ll come across barriers that are seemingly impossible to cross. You might have tried looking through 10’s of forums, libraries and tutorials but you’re still unable to solve your problem. The best thing to do is to stop and then start at the very beginning. Look into the available documentation such as data sheets, refer to pin connection diagrams and pin functions, look into application notes provided by manufacturers and if you’re still unable to find a solution look for help. Either on forums or from experienced personnel using the same offerings. Each barrier you come across will improve your overall skills by leaps and bounds. So don’t despair. The hard in hardware can be overcome by hard work.
Do I need to invest money?
Yes. Hardware requires that you have a bare minimum infrastructure. Some of the most commonly used components tend to be:
- A breadboard
- Jumper cables (Male to Male, Female to Female)
- A multimeter
- Soldering kit (Soldering Iron, Flux, Solder Wire, Desoldering Pump)
- Wire Cutter
- A dev board (Arduino, STM32, nRF52, etc.)
- USB cable
- A PC
- Tactile Buttons
- LED’s
- Potentiometers
- Sensors (LDR, Ultrasonic Sensor, Flex Sensor, IR Sensor, Acclerometer, etc.)
The typical hardware workflow.
- Component Selection
- Component Study
- PCB Schematic
- PCB Layout
- Board Spin-Up
- Pin Configuration
- Peripheral Configuration
- Firmware Coding
- Debugging
- Iterate
Commonly used abbreviations
nRF52-DK
DK - Development Kit
SES - Seeger Embedded Studio
BLE - Bluetooth Low Energy
Softdevice - Library provided by Nordic for BLE
Build - Compile the code to a binary
ARM Cortex M4 - A low power microprocessor
LED - Light Emitting Diode
Segger J-Link - A debugger for ARM based microcontrollers
COM - Communications
TTL - Transistor Transistor Logic
UART - Universal Asynchronous Receiver Transmitter
VDD - Voltage Drain Drain
Pin Initialisation - Assigning a function to a pin
Intervals - Timer intervals
PCLK - Prescaled Clock Source - Downscaled/Divided Clock Source
HFCLK - High Frequency Clock Source
STM
SPI - Serial Peripheral Interface
I2C - Inter Integrated Circuit
IDE - Integrated Development Environment
GPIO - General Purpose Input/Output
CubeMX - Project initialisation tool by STM
HAL - Hardware Abstraction Layer
Dialog
Power Profiler - A software used for measuring power consumption
LDO - Low Dropout Out Regulator
PCIe - Peripheral Component Interconnect Express
Kiel uVision - An IDE made by ARM for ARM based microcontrollers and SoC’s
GNU - GNU is not Unix