MicroLab.info is a website with information about electronics and microcontrollers for beginners and more advanced hobbyists.
I’m interested in microcontrollers since I found they exist – somewhere about late 1990s. The first microcontroller I used is PIC16F84. Microcontrollers then were not that fascinating as today – there were no lots of peripherals, built in ADCs/DACs were pretty expensive. All you could do is read and set IOs. However that was enough to make me want to program these things. If you are a programmer you know what I mean. The fact that you can program your own unique device – huge. Today you can easily “escape” the PC by making programs for Android. Yes, it’s interesting, but nothing compares to build the whole thing and write a program for it!
Sounds great, but most people that have no knowledge of electronics are scared or not interested of doing it. Why? Because they think it’s difficult. Well, it’s not! It’s easy. If you are a true programmer and you know how to count in binary and hex, then microcontrollers would be a piece of cake. Well not exactly, but if you are a true programmer you would know that nothing works from the first time.
So I decided to make this site to give a kick start for the newbies in electronics, but also to share troubles that even more advanced users have. Along with microcontrollers I’ll write some basic articles about electronics and I’ll try to make it as simple as possible to be helpful for beginners in electronics. Yes, you can’t do microcontrollers without a little bit of knowledge about electronics. Maybe someone will say that you could – there are lots of higher level development boards like Arduino for example, but soon or later you will have troubles that only knowledge in electronics will solve. Plus electronics is fun. Any technical geek would confirm it.
