Jones, B. A., & Reese, R. B., & Mohammadi-Aragh, M. J. (2014, June), The Forest and the Trees: Using an Appropriate Level of Library Abstraction for Microcontroller Instruction  Paper presented at 2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Indianapolis, Indiana. 10.18260/1-2--23149

\bibitem{asee_peer_23149}
  Jones, B. A., \& Reese, R. B., \& Mohammadi-Aragh, M. J. (2014, June), \emph{The Forest and the Trees: Using an Appropriate Level of Library Abstraction for Microcontroller Instruction}
  Paper presented at 2014 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, Indianapolis, Indiana.
  10.18260/1-2--23149

Bryan A. Jones, Robert B. Reese, and M. Jean Mohammadi-Aragh.  "The Forest and the Trees: Using an Appropriate Level of Library Abstraction for Microcontroller Instruction".  2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Indianapolis, Indiana, 2014, June.  ASEE Conferences, 2014.  https://peer.asee.org/23149 Internet.  12 Jan, 2025

\bibitem{asee_peer_23149}
  Bryan A. Jones, Robert B. Reese, and M. Jean Mohammadi-Aragh.
  "The Forest and the Trees: Using an Appropriate Level of Library Abstraction for Microcontroller Instruction".
  \emph{2014 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, Indianapolis, Indiana, 2014, June}.
  ASEE Conferences, 2014.
  https://peer.asee.org/23149 Internet.  12 Jan, 2025

@INPROCEEDINGS{asee_peer_23149
author = "Bryan A. Jones, Robert B. Reese, and M. Jean Mohammadi-Aragh"
title = "The Forest and the Trees: Using an Appropriate Level of Library Abstraction for Microcontroller Instruction"
booktitle = "2014 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition"
year = "2014"
month = "June"
address = "Indianapolis, Indiana"
publisher = "ASEE Conferences"
note = {https://peer.asee.org/23149}
number = {10.18260/1-2--23149}
}

TY  - CPAPER
AB  -              The Forest and the Trees: Using an Appropriate Level of               Library Abstraction for Microcontroller InstructionThe relentless advances seen in the microcontroller market now challenge educators with, as Pogo says,an insurmountable opportunity. For less than $5, modern microcontrollers provide a staggering varietyof peripherals coupled with unprecedented processing power. This complexity leads to data sheets thateasily exceed 1000 pages. Instructors face the problem of providing students ready access tomicrocontroller features without overwhelming them with the detailed knowledge that professionalengineers often spend years acquiring.In terms of  microcontroller hardware abstraction, vendor libraries typically provide a morehuman­readable interface to control and status registers (openUART1(BAUD_RATE_9600 |PARITY_NONE…), for example), but this is of little assistance with higher­level abstractions (write abyte over the I2C bus, for example, which requires a series of blocking reads and writes). Many RTOSproducts do provide helpful high­level abstractions, but often at the price of significant complexity bettercovered in a later course in embedded systems. Open­source libraries such as Arduino and mbedprovide an easy­to­use interface for all peripherals, but often obscure the underlying implementationconcepts students must master. There is a need for a low­complexity library that provides someabstraction while exposing low­level details.Therefore, this paper therefore presents the design philosophy behind an open­source library thatprovides a minimalist hardware abstraction layer for the 16­bit family of Microchip’s microcontrollers,created to enable educators to focus on the core concepts common to a microcontroller (such asgeneral­purpose I/O, timers, and serial protocols such as I2C and SPI) while also exposing somelow­level details for students to gain a deeper understanding of the operation of a microcontroller. Inaddition to its pedagogical role, this library also serves a practical role in providing students hands­onexperience using microcontroller peripherals in the course of their laboratory exercises and also scalesto enable students to employ multiple microcontroller peripherals in the course of their capstone designexperience. This library has been used since late 2008, and Google Analytics numbers for the library’swebsite give 84,000 visits since January 2009, with approximately 52% from the United States and therest international.Students are capable of creating amazing designs with the proper instructional support from educators.A library designed for pedagogical use provides instructors with the ability to explain fundamentalconcepts behind microcontroller operation while challenging their students with laboratory exerciseswhich explore the many communication protocols and capabilities of a modern microcontroller.
AU  - Bryan A. Jones
AU  - Robert B. Reese
AU  - M. Jean Mohammadi-Aragh
CY  - Indianapolis, Indiana
DA  - 2014/06/15
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - The Forest and the Trees: Using an Appropriate Level of Library Abstraction for Microcontroller Instruction
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/23149
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--23149
ER  -