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Chapter 2 MCU Hardware Overview

Lesson-1 : MCU Hardware Overview:

Ports, Registers, GPIO, Analog I/O, ADC/DAC

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 Lesson-1 Outline
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• Most common microcontrollers

• Criteria for choosing a Microcontroller
• Some facts about AVR µc’s
• AVR internal architecture
• Atmel Atmega32 highlights
• AVR different groups
• Registers
• Ports
• GPIO
• Analog I/O
• ADC

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Most common microcontrollers
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8-bit microcontrollers
• Atmel AVR
• Microchip’s PIC
• Freescale Semiconductor’s HCS08
• Intel’s 8051
• Zilog’s Z8
32-bit microcontrollers
• AVR32
• ARM
• PIC32

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Most common microcontrollers
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Criteria for choosing a Microcontroller
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1. Meet the task at hand efficiently and cost

effectively.
a) Speed- highest speed µc supports
b) Packaging- DIP, QFP, etc., space required while
assembling
c) Power consumption- critical for battery-powered
products
d) Amount of RAM & ROM on the chip
e) I/O –number of I/O pins and the time on the chip
f) Ease of upgrade to higher performance, lower
power consumption versions
g) Cost per unit.

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Criteria for choosing a Microcontroller
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2. Availability of development products, such

as, Assembler, debugger, code-efficient,
compiler, emulator, technical support,
both in-house and outside expertise, third-
party vendor support

3. Ready availability of µc in quantities both

present and future.

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Some facts about AVR µc’s
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• AVR basic architecture:

– Alf-Egil Bogen and Vegard Wollan
(Norwegian Institute of Technology (NTH))
• AVR ≡ Advanced Virtual RISC
• Except for AVR32, all other AVR’s are 8-bit µc’s.
• In terms of software Atmel µc’s are not 100%
compatible.
• Atmel have all dedicated massive resources to
ensure wide and timely availability of their
products.
• They are stable, mature and single sourced.

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AVR internal architecture
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RAM EEPROM Timers

PROGRAM
ROM

Program
Bus Bus
CPU

Interrupt Other
OSC Ports
Unit Peripherals

I/O
PINS

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AVR internal architecture
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AVR inside Arduino circuit board

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AVR internal architecture
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AVR internal architecture - pins
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Power and Ground Pins

•VCC: Power supply pin (typically +5V).
•GND: Ground reference pin.
Clock and Reset Pins
•XTAL1: External crystal oscillator input pin 1.
•XTAL2: External crystal oscillator input pin 2.
•RESET: Reset pin (active low).
Digital I/O Pins
•PA0-PA7: General-purpose digital I/O pins, also used as ADC (Analog to Digital Converter) input
channels.
•PB0-PB7: General-purpose digital I/O pins with various alternate functions like timers, USART
(Universal Synchronous/Asynchronous Receiver Transmitter), and SPI (Serial Peripheral
Interface).
•PC0-PC7: General-purpose digital I/O pins, also used for TWI (Two-Wire Interface) and JTAG
(Joint Test Action Group) pins.
•PD0-PD7: General-purpose digital I/O pins with functions like USART, external interrupts, and
timers.
Analog and Reference Pins
•AVCC: Power supply pin for the ADC (Analog to Digital Converter).
•AREF: Analog reference pin for the ADC.
•ADC0-ADC7: Analog input channels for the ADC.
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Communication Pins
•RXD: USART receive pin.
•TXD: USART transmit pin.
•MOSI: SPI master out, slave in pin.
•MISO: SPI master in, slave out pin.
•SCK: SPI serial clock pin.
•SS: SPI slave select pin.
Timer and Counter Pins
•T0: Timer/Counter0 external counter input pin.
•T1: Timer/Counter1 external counter input pin.
•ICP: Timer/Counter1 input capture pin.
•OC1A/B: Timer/Counter1 output compare match pins.
•OC2: Timer/Counter2 output compare match pin.
Interrupt Pins
•INT0: External interrupt 0 input pin.
•INT1: External interrupt 1 input pin.
•INT2: External interrupt 2 input pin.

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Example: Led blinking hardware connection

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Atmel Atmega32
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Registers
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• AVR’s CPU
– ALU
– 32 General Purpose
registers (R0 to R31)
– PC register
– Instruction decoder
– SREG

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GPIO
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•
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AVR ATmega32 has 32 IO pins constituting four ports. The ports are listed
below :
1. PORT A
2. PORT B
3. PORT C
4. PORT D.
• Each port has 8 pins.
• The pins of these four ports can be used as general-purpose
inputs/outputs.
• These pins can be configured as input or output using the three I/O registers
for each port. These registers are listed below :
• 1. DDRxregisters: These are used to decide the direction of the pins, i.e.
whether the pins will act as input pins or as output pins
• 2. PINxregisters: These are used to read the logic level on the port pins.
• 3. PORTxregisters: These are used to set the logic on the pins HIGH or LOW.
• (Where x can be A, B, C, or D depending on which port registers are being
addressed).
• Each pin also has some special functionality associated with it as well.

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 Example 1
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ADC
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• Analog-to-digital converters(ADC)are among the most widely

used devices for data acquisition
• Digital computer use binary (discrete), but physical world
everything is analog (continuous).
• Thus, a device called transducer(sensor) is needed to
convert physical quantities (i.e. temperature, pressure, etc)
to electrical (voltage/current) signal.
• ADC is used to translate the analog signals to digital signal.

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ADC
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• Atmega32 has 10 bit ADC, which means we

will get digital output 0 to 1023.
i.e. When the input is 0V, the digital output
will be 0V & when input is 5V (and
Vref=5V), we will get the highest digital
output corresponding to 1023
steps, which is 5V.

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ADC
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Example
Let's assume the following:
• Vref = 5V
• Resolution = 10 bits (1024 levels)
• Input Voltage (Vin) = 2.5V

Step-by-Step Conversion
1.Step Size Calculation:
1. The step size is calculated as Vref / (2^resolution - 1) = 5V / 1023 ≈ 4.88 mV per
step.
2.Quantization:
1. Vin = 2.5V
2. The ADC determines how many steps fit into 2.5V by dividing Vin by the step size.
3. Number of steps = Vin / Step Size = 2.5V / 4.88mV ≈ 512
3.Digital Output:
1. The ADC converts the 512 steps into a binary value.
2. For a 10-bit ADC, the binary representation of 512 is 1000000000 (in binary).

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AVR simplest connection
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• external crystal,
• external RESET button,
• additional components for AD converter
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Driving Loads – source or sink configurations
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• An output pin not connected to anything is not of

much interest. To do something useful it must be
connected to another device, referred here simply
as a “load”.
• A real world load could be an LED, a lamp, a
transistor, or some other circuit element.
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Driving Loads – source or sink configurations
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• Generally there are two ways to connect an output pin

to a load.
1. The first is where the microcontroller supplies the current
to drive the device. The microcontroller is referred to as the
source. Current flows from the microcontroller power to the
output pin, through the load and to ground.
2. A microcontroller I/O pin can be set by the program to
operate as an output. The output voltage will be close to
the supply voltage when the output is set to a logical 1.
The output voltage will be close to 0 volts when the pin is
set to a logical 0.
3. The microcontroller pin can also “sink” the current as
shown in Figure. Here the current flows from the power
supply through the load and through the output pin to
ground. It is important that the load be connected to the
same power supply line as the microcontroller, otherwise
destroy the IC.
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Digital input – pull up or pull down resistor
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• Sometimes you want an input to read as a 1 or 0 as a

default. Suppose you have a sensor on a cable that
plugs into your device. It is possible that the user will
disconnect the cable. If the input pin is left floating, it
might sometimes read as a 1, sometimes as a 0. Your
code might interpret this as changes from a sensor
and not act the way you want.
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Digital input – pull up or pull down resistor
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• Putting a pull up resistor will set the input voltage

near Vcc and it will read as a 1. A pull down
resistor will bring the voltage near 0V, and it will
read as a zero. Figure shows pull up and pull down
resistors. The switch, sensor, or other component that
generates the normal 1 and 0 voltages must be able
to over drive the resistor.
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More on GPIO ports and registers in AVR

https://www.electronicwings.com/avr-atmega/atmega1632-
gpio-ports-and-registers

End of Lesson-1

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