Treffer: Embedded Systems using the Raspberry Pi Pico.

In engineering and engineering technology programs, students learn about embedded systems in a variety of upper and lower-division courses. Each of these courses includes a lab component where students design and implement hands-on projects which reinforce lecture materials. This paper will demonstrate that the Raspberry Pi Pico embedded board can be used as a basis for many laboratory projects within a variety of embedded courses. Some courses include Introduction to Programming, Microprocessors, Embedded Systems, Object-Oriented Programming, Measurements and Instrumentation, Wireless Communications, and Control Systems. The Raspberry Pi Pico is a new inexpensive board built on the RP2040 microcontroller. Some key features of this board include USB device and host support, 26 GPIO pins, on-board temperature sensor, PWM, ADC, and various interfaces such as SPI, I2C, and UART. Software development can occur using either C or MicroPython. MicroPython is a small subset of the Python standard library, and it is designed to run on a variety of microcontrollers for embedded applications. For this work, MicroPython will be used for software development within Thonny, the Python IDE. The goal of this paper is to show a series of embedded lab projects that can be used within these courses. Possible lab projects include: digital and analog I/O operations, serial LCD interface (I2C and UART), control of LED strip using SPI interface, ultrasonic range sensor control, temperature sensor interface using ADC control, GPS control, and DC motor control using a half-H bridge driver IC. Several of these projects will be presented in this paper. A student assessment will also be provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]