Coverage includes—

• Written for the Beginner to Intermediate reader

• Appealing to a variety of electronics hobbyists

• Authors have classroom experience teaching this topic

• Includes several hands-on sample projects

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 22 Ratings

Good starting point - 2008-03-25
Reviewer Rating:
This book gives a good starting point for progaming microcontrolers, building some simple robots, conecting your art-work to computers. I would recomend buying other books that would complement this one though. Not so glamorous, books like Robot Builder's Bonanza would give you a more "hands on" info, manly on mechanical parts. I would also suggest magazines like MAKE because they are full of simple creative ideias that are easy to do for starting of physical construction and some practical hacking. That said, I seriouly recommend it.

Computing in Microcontrollers - 2009-10-16
Reviewer Rating:
Though, I haven't finish reading this book yet, explains everything from basic electronics to microcontroller based projects. Explains common electronic components and microprocessor functions. I bought this book to get to know the functionality of microcontroller (& other electronics components) in order get started another embedded programming project. I followed the other reviews to this particular book and I would recommend to other beginners.

excellent scope, flawed in some details - 2009-06-28
Reviewer Rating:
Overall the book does an excellent job covering a wide range of logically-organized material. This ranges from getting information into a microcontroller (reading a sensor or pushbutton), to processing that information, to acting on it (e.g. running a a motor or passing it to a desktop machine).

The book is strong at the technical level. It shows actual circuits (although photos can be somewhat murky), gives code for a number of specific microcontrollers, lists part numbers, describes existing communication standards, and so on.

The book is weaker at the theoretical level. Since it doesn't often attempt to go into theory, that's mostly OK. However, the opening analogy of electricity to water flow is wrong (voltage is like water pressure, not like the speed of water). This made me wonder what other errors the book might contain, in material that I'm not so familiar with.

As a final complaint, sometimes the phrasing can be vague or confusing. Almost always the problem is clarified a few sentences on, but it's still distracting. A fairly high-profile example is the title of Chapter 6, "The 'Big Four' Schematics, Programs, and Transducers." The title is intended to convey that the chapter covers schematics, programs, and transducers for "the Big Four" (digital input, digital output, analog input, and analog output). However as a stand-alone title it conveys nothing, and trips me up since a list of three items follows a reference to "the big four." A colon or some other punctuation might help, but better would be to just call it "Handling Transducers" or something else as straightforward.

I would recommend this book to anybody interested in interfacing microcontrollers with the physical environment. However if you don't have a basic electronics background, I would suggest supplementing this book with Brindley's Starting Electronics, which introduces individual components via a very nice hands-on approach.

Good begginner book - 2008-09-17
Reviewer Rating:
I really enjoyed this book. It was clearly written and progressed at a pace that could take a beginner to a novice in a short time. There is some basic fundamental theory at the start building into hands on projects in a few chapters. When reading this book it is a lot easier to understand if you assemble the projects while reading the chapter (as recommended by the author).

Marcos Chilet........diseñar conductas. - 2008-03-28
Reviewer Rating:
Este libro es una muy buena introducci-ón a los principios de la electr-ónica aplicados a microcontroladores. Existen muchos ejemplos en el uso de diversos componentes,como : servo motores, sensores, circuitos. Con los que se puede alcanzar altos niveles de interactividad. El libro parte desde lo b sico hasta involucrarse con telepresencia a traves de internet..etc...Muy recomendable.

Marcos Chilet
Dise-ño, Pontificia Universidad Cat-ólica de Chile

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