A Microcontroller Applications Course And The Freescale’s Microcontroller Student Learning Kit

This paper describes the improvement of a microcontroller applications course by the adaptation of a new microcontroller development toolFreescale’s microcontroller student learning kit with CSM12C32 module for the course. This paper also describes the pedagogy for this course and the student evaluation results. The microcontroller applications course is a junior/senior level course offered in the electrical engineering department. The objective of the course is to teach the students how to design microcontroller-based systems. The particular microcontroller used in this course at the present time is the Freescale MC9S12C32. The integrated development environment used is CodeWarrior Development Studio for HCS12. It supports assembly, C and C++ programming. The major course outcomes were: first, with the adaptation of the Freescale kit the design flow has become simpler and smoother than before. Elements of the design flow such as editing of programs, compiling, flashing, debugging and reflashing of the microcontrollers are done in one development platformCodeWarrior. Second, the form factor of the CSM12C32 module is small enough that our microcontroller projects have become truly embedded systems. Third, the skills and the tools covered in this microcontroller course are useful to the students that they prefer to use them in their capstone design projects. Fourth, the student evaluation results of this course taught by the author have been among the highest in our department and the college. This microcontroller course with the Freescale student learning kits is a viable approach for equipping students with the skills and tools that they need for prototyping embedded systems and for preparing them for their future design projects.