MILES: A Microcontroller Learning System combining Hardware and Software tools

Microcontrollers are one of the most important devices implementing communication and electronic control systems. By this reason, microcontroller applications learning is essential not only for electrical engineers but also for mechanical, chemical, industrial, etc. But these engineers need a different way of learning, combining theoretical and practical approaches. This paper presents MILES (Microcontroller Learning System), which is a multifunctional module for microcontroller based system design and applications learning. MILES combines a hypermedia software tool running on a personal computer with a hardware development board based on a flash PIC microcontroller. Flash microcontrollers make easier reprogramming and testing applications on the fly, offering the possibility of functionality change. MILES constitutes an innovative way of learning in the sense that involves a hardware tool with an user-friendly hypermedia tutorial and can be used by electrical engineers as well as by other engineers. To achieve this feature it is able to run not only as a development system of microcontroller applications but as a demonstration system by means of electronic modules with a practical functionality (for instance, optoelectronic counting systems, stepping motor control, RF communications circuits, etc)