A microcontroller-based embedded system design course with PSoC3

Abstract

The development of a microcontroller-based system design course using the PSoC Lab Manual and customly designed project assignments are presented in this paper. Due to the natural segregation of computing blocks on these devices as digital vs. analog blocks, microcontroller-based systems can be taught in 2 terms, for digital and analog systems design separately. The presented course is designed to combine analog and digital design concepts in one single course that lasts for 10 weeks, using the PSoC3 board. The course is designed to include (i) lab tasks and (ii) weekly assignments. Based on the course syllabus, the students are assigned lab tasks following a selected lab from the PSoC3 Lab Manual each week. In addition to these selected labs from the manual, a weekly design project is assigned which cumulatively covers concepts both the current and previous weeks, in order to provide students in-depth knowledge about the microcontrollers and programmable system-on-chip boards.