Books, Courses and Guides about Designing/Programming a MPU based System - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / beginners

author: kudagaci
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: October 02, 2020, 08:21:29 pm
content: deleted

author: rstofer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 02, 2020, 09:09:44 pm
content: Your question is far to vague and all-inclusive to get much of a response. You didn't fill in your country flag and, if it isn't United States, you can skip everything below.There are several platforms for beginners and the easiest is the Arduino. Everything that can possibly be done with an Arduino has been done and it's all of the Internet. Starting out I would look at the Freenove Ultimate Starter Kithttps://www.amazon.com/dp/B08B4D5MV5?pd_rd_i=B08B4D5MV5You can search the Freenove site for the files and there will be a terrific Tutorial.pdfhttps://github.com/Freenove/Freenove_Ultimate_Starter_Kit/archive/master.zipThis kit comes with an Arduino clone so everything is ready to go.Or, consider a similar kit for the Raspberry Pi 4 - this is a really nice development platform because, among other things, it has a full network stack. The Pi is not included in the kithttps://www.amazon.com/Freenove-Raspberry-Processing-Tutorials-Components/dp/B06W54L7B5https://github.com/Freenove/Freenove_Ultimate_Starter_Kit_for_Raspberry_Pi/archive/master.zipThen there is everything else. STM32, PSoC 6, NXP <whatever> and a host of others. The learning curve will be a good deal steeper. This book begins with installing the tools and works uphttps://leanpub.com/mastering-stm32The Internet is full of tutorials. Google for 'getting started with stm32 video'Amazon has a lot of books on the topic - pick one.All of the above doesn't even scratch the surface but your question is too open-ended.

author: rstofer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 03, 2020, 01:04:47 am
content: Buy the Raspberry Pi kit I linked above and buy the Pi separatelyhttps://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07VD568FB-- case with heatsink - works well with Ultimate Kithttps://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06WWQ7KLV-- HDMI cablehttps://www.amazon.com/Raspberry-Model-2019-Quad-Bluetooth/dp/B07TD42S27-- Pi 4 get 4 GB versionhttps://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07TSFYXBC-- power supplyhttps://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B071XCHZNB-- spacer headers to get pins above casehttps://www.amazon.com/Samsung-MicroSD-Memory-Adapter-MB-MC64GA/dp/B07F22X6C4-- 64 GBhttps://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07BF3LFN3-- cheap keyboard and mouseYou need a monitor with HDMI capabilityFollow the yellow brick road to install Raspian on the SD cardhttps://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/installation/installing-images/You would then have Raspian Linux running on a Raspberry Pi 4 with enough projects in the Ultimate Kit to keep you going for quite a while. It will be a good education. Study up on VNC, install the client on your Windows machine and enable it with raspi-config and you can use any networked PC as a console - very cool! You still need the mouse/keyboard and monitor for initial configuration.https://www.realvnc.com/en/connect/download/viewer/I often use VNC on my laptop even thought my Pi 4 has a 27" monitor.The kit tutorial spends a lot of time getting you up to speed on Linux and using both C/C++ and Python. There's a ton of education in that Ultimate Kit and not just in attaching peripherals to the Pi. HIGHLY recommended!As to building an SBC, that's an entirely different project. I sure wouldn't do it! I would buy a uC in a 'stamp format' and build a daughter card for my peripherals. Maybe the Teensy 4.1https://www.pjrc.com/store/teensy41.htmlThis requires the toolchain to be installed and it is usually done under the Arduino IDE. Not my favorite and there are alternatives. But this is entirely different than hanging peripherals on a Pi.If you want to play with old time microprocessors:https://rc2014.co.uk/I have several incantations and I just ordered the Mini with the CP/M upgrade - turns out I started with micros in the mid '70s when this stuff was just starting up. Nostalgia!

author: rstofer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 03, 2020, 03:39:45 am
content: As to books, Amazon has books on Raspberry Pi, Raspian, Linux, C, C++, Python and just about anything else you want.There are simply too many books to bother reviewing them. Just find one that seems to match your interest and get started. Personally, I would start with the tutorial in the kit.Videos on the same topics are all over the place.Maybe this Kindle version of "Learning Raspian". I haven't read it but for $10, it's probably a good place to start.https://www.amazon.com/Learning-Raspbian-William-Harrington-ebook/dp/B00U01QR1KETA: I bought a copy of the book and it is rather old. It doesn't cover the Pi 4 and the hardware is somewhat different. It's not a huge difference but it means you can't take the book as gospel. Still, not a bad book for a Pi beginner.I was pretty specific on the power supply because I want mine to have an inline power switch. When you do a$ sudo shutdown -h nowor use the GUI Menu->Logout->Shutdown, you must wait for the disk to finish updating before removing power. Watch the green LED and wait a few seconds after it quits blinking. If you just drop power to a Pi, you will likely scramble the filesystem and lose everything you have ever done. Yes, a small UPS is worthwhile. I have one and will probably buy a second to support my router, NAS and Pi projects.You can back up your important files to a thumb drive, FAT32 would be the way to go.

author: Doctorandus_P
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 05, 2020, 10:00:38 pm
content: This post is only about the "linux boards" part of the question...I really dislike the Raspi's.They are not very "open". First "Broadcom", the company that makes the processors on the Raspi's is a horror when it comes to "openness".The datasheets for for example the Sittara chips as used in the Beagle bone are freely available on the 'web. (Warning, it's over 5000 pages)The "Raspi community" seems to be delirious once they've found some obscure peripheral in the broadcom chip and managed to reverse-engineer a driver for it.I think the full schematic and PCB layout of the BeagleBone (Black, Blue, other variants?) is /are also freely available on the 'web, but I have not looked.You can also start with the Olinuxino A64.It's a few generations newer / faster then the Beaglebone, costs about the same as those other small Linux boards, and it's pretty open.If you install KiCad ( Completely Free & Open Source PCB desing Program, then you can follow this link:https://kicad-pcb.org/made-with-kicad/And follow it to the github repositories of the Olinuxino A64.Olimex has also put a lot of other boards they make on Github, the older boards are (were) made in eagle.Olimex also sells separate components for the boards they make, so if you want to roll your own variant, with for example additional custom hardware, you can use their reference layout as a starting point.But first just install KiCad and open the A64 in it. That will give you a good idea of the sort of complexity you are dealing with.Another way to go would be one of the many "retro computing" boards. There are lots of projects floating around with the Z80, 8080 68000 and other processors. Complexity and density of these old designs is much less, and they can often be soldered with a regular soldering iron. (Don't even think of doing that to an A64!)There is a lot of overlap between all the boards that run Linux. So much that if you read the manual for one board, you can apply 80% of it to a different board, and for the 20% that does not work it's probably easy to locate which parts they are. For example, the Beaglebone has completely different header pinout compared to a Raspi.You can also look at the O-droids from Hardkernel.https://www.hardkernel.com/makes quite a lot of different small Linux boards and different configurations, and they also have a monthlyhttps://magazine.odroid.com/, freely downloadable as PDF with projects with their boards.Yet another good source for info ishttps://hackaday.com/Hackaday post about 5 projects each day, and they have done that for 10+ years and their site is searchable.