Introduction to microcontrollers

In this section, we will focus on what a microcontroller is and what its main parts are. It is important to understand what the microcontrollers are capable of and how they are used as a fundamental part of many embedded systems, so they can be used in real-world projects. An embedded system is a computer subsystem that usually works as part of a larger computer system, for example, a wireless router containing a microcontroller. Let's start with a definition of microcontrollers.

A microcontroller (also known as a microcontroller unit, or MCU) is a very small computer system self-contained in an integrated circuit (IC). It encases all the necessary computing components to execute tasks, computes numeric calculations, reads data from sensors, keeps data and a program in memory, and send data to actuators, among other actions. Most of the microcontrollers perform analog-to-digital conversion (ADC), obtaining analog data from sensors and converting...