Welcome
... to my first attempt to write a book "Jump Start Microcontrollers". Inspired by the process of jump starting a car with dead batteries. I'll try to show you how to "jump start" a microcontroller.
We will begin with zero and I'll show you how to get and use the information to awake Frankenstein's Monster (our target board, the BBC micro:bit). My current plan is to do everything in plain old C99 with no assembly needed at all. I sure hope this plan will work out (no promises).
Also I'll try to use only FOSS products and as little of the (proprietary) vendor libraries as possible.
Is this book right for me?#
If you can answer any of that question with a "yes", a "definitely" or a "omg I always wanted to know something about that", this book should be the right choice for you. - Do you want to learn to set up microcontroller projects from the bottom up? - Do you want to learn how to get up a running C/C++ environment on your own? - Do you want to learn something more of the Cortex-M0? - Do you want to know how to read the microcontroller manuals to get the information you'll need?
Resources#
The Resource page will be updated continuously, so that you'll find every PDF, every website and every book I'll reference throughout this book there.
About Me#
The good old "Who am I?"" and "What have I accomplished so far?"
Hey, I am Fabian Zahn and I am an Embedded Software Engineer working for Jungheinrich (forklift trucks and interlogistics) for the last five years.
I really like my job and all about embedded software (who doesn't?). I studied electrical engineering years ago just to find out how computers really work. Initially I wanted to study informatics but I always wondered how everything fits together from the highest level language to the tiniest transistor. So electrical engineering was the obvious (and right) choice for me.
As a last remark I would like to point out that I am not a native speaker (I am actually from Germany, the country with the velvety soft language). So please feel free to question and or correct my English at any time.
Contributing#
This book is a work in progress and I plan to write it in my spare time, so mistakes will be made, errors will occur and typos will appear. Please don't hesitate to report an issue or create a pull request.
See the contributing page for more information on how to do it.
License#
My role model in terms of writing books, Bob Nystrom, did come up with a very smart approach which I adapted: A dual license. It is worth reading his reasoning behind is license approach, so feel free to do so.
My version of his approach can be found under here.