With this free online course, learn how to combine PIC Microcontrollers with Python for your next electronics project.

Did you realize that air conditioners and other home appliances such as washing machines, vacuum cleaners and refrigerators use microcontrollers? In this electronics course, you will be guided through connecting PIC Microcontrollers utilizing Python programming language and apply your knowledge in creative and practical ways. As a compact integrated circuit, a microcontroller is designed to govern a particular operation in an embedded system and is also a programmable integrated circuit that is capable of multiple functions depending on how it is programmed. You can use many higher-level programming languages for microcontrolling and the most common ones used are C++, Java and Python. In this Python course, you will be taught how to use Python in microcontrolling and there are many reasons why Python is preferred including the fact that it is a powerful, popular language which is simple to use and understand and has many useful functionalities.

As you delve deeper into this PIC Microcontroller tutorial, hardware and software requirements are discussed. For hardware, you need a PIC programmer, a PIC 16F Micro Microcontroller, a Breadboard, two types of resistors namely the 100R Resistor and 5.6k Resistor, and an RTDI 232 USB to serial converter. In terms of software, the requirements are a laptop with Python installed, PySerial library or Pycharm, which is the Python integrated development environment (IDE) for professional developers. It is important to ensure that there is a hardware connection between the PIC Microcontroller and the laptop/computer that will run the Python script. You may also need the Virtual COM Port Driver, a powerful technology designed explicitly for developing, testing or debugging serial port software and hardware.

The last section of this course focuses on other requirements and tips to carry out microcontrolling successfully. Arduino scripts are written in a language similar to C++ and combined or recorded in the flash memory of your microcontroller. Before writing your Python programme to drive Arduino, you need to upload the fermata (fermata is a particular generic protocol for communicating with microcontrollers from software on a host computer) sketch. Other tools can serve this purpose too, including mikroC PRO, a powerful feature-rich development tool for PIC microcontrollers, and the Proteus Design Suite, which is a proprietary software tool used primarily for electronic design automation. The world of electronics is extremely interesting and is evolving fast in this modern world. You should enrol in this comprehensive course if you are a student studying programming, a professional involved in the development of electronics and equipment or an electronics enthusiast wanting to create interesting projects.