Controlling The Real World With C

      This article is for anyone who is the least bit curious about monitoring and controlling such things as motors, lights and switches, or recording and playing everything from sound to the arm position on a robot.

       It's for anyone who likes to learn by doing. You will not only read about controlling motors, lights and sound, you will control real motors, real lights, and really record and play information.


       It's for anyone who finds intriguing the prospect of controlling a robot or a toy or an appliance by means of a computer embedded in it or, for that matter, a whole factory or space station. 


       It's for anyone who has done little with computers beyond clicking a mouse button, as well as the professional looking for source code. It's for anyone who wants to reach as far as the imagination will take them. 


       This article is for teachers who would like to give their students some interesting, hands-on experience. It's for people who are considering a career change but don't want to suffer the high cost and time of a formal education before knowing for sure that this is the career they would actually look forward to every morning. 


       It's for programmers who would like to know how to read schematics and construct hardware  and hardware people who would like to know how to write programs to control their hardware.

Table Of Contents

1.   Data lines, bits, nibbles, bytes, words, binary and HEX
2.   Boolean Logic
3.   Address Lines and Ports
4.   How to Read a Schematic
5.   Hardware Description
6.   Putting It All Together - Controlling The Hardware With The Software
7.   Experiment 1 - Basic Switch Input Detection
8.   Experiment 2 - Expanding Switch Input Detection
9.   Experiment 3 - The General Purpose Digital Input/Output Module - Part 1
10. Experiment 4 - The Multiple Closure Problem And Basic Outputs With The PPI
11. Experiment 5 - Controlling Motors
12. Experiment 6 - More Precise Control Of Motors
13. Experiment 7 - Bi-directional Control Of Motors And The H-Bridge
14. Experiment 8 - Digital To Analog Conversion
15. Experiment 9 - Analog To Digital Conversion
16. Experiment 10 - Using Analog Inputs To Control Motors
17. Experiment 11 - Using Analog Inputs For Bi-Dirctional Control Of Motors