I just graduated from undergraduate degree and am a little confused. I want to get started with microcontrollers. How should I start?

College students who have just graduated, or those who are about to graduate, will feel a little unconfident, anxious, confused, and unsure of themselves.

After reading books for nearly 20 years, I am about to enter the society, and I am a little overwhelmed.

Can I find a job in my field? Does your major have future prospects? Is the knowledge you have learned enough? How to choose your career direction?

Everyone has experienced this. When I just graduated from college, I was at a loss. There were many internship units in the school, but I didn’t know how to choose.

When I graduated, there were many units in school where I could choose to intern, but most of them were doing assembly line work. Good units were very competitive.

Several of our brothers who participated in e-sports discussed it and decided to find a job on our own.

We were a group of three, carrying a bag together, and started our first step into society - looking for a job.

We originally wanted to go to Shenzhen, but we heard from our seniors that Shenzhen is too chaotic. Suzhou, Hangzhou, and Shanghai are better. Our final destination is Suzhou.

This is the first time in our lives that we are traveling far away without the help of our family or teachers. Although our hearts are hot, we are more confused.

It was the first time for the three of us to go to Suzhou. We had no friends or relatives, and we had no idea where we were going in Suzhou or where we would stay.

When I arrived in Suzhou, I found the cheapest hotel. A room for three people cost about 100 yuan. To this day, I can’t even remember where I got off the bus or where I found the hotel.

Facing Suzhou, I feel confused, a city that is too unfamiliar.

During that time, we took the bus around every day to visit the job market, submit resumes, and even went to a talent agency, the kind that guaranteed to find you a job if you paid 1,000 yuan.

Every day I eat the cheapest food on the roadside, and I often go hungry because I can't find cheap food.

After searching for a month, none of the three of us could find a suitable job, and we were almost running out of money. One brother couldn't stand it and went to work in sales, and another went to an electronics factory to do maintenance, but I still can't. willingly.

I also spent all my money and had to ask my family for help.

Later, I went to Shenzhen and looked for a job for another month. My hard work paid off, and I finally found the right profession for me - software engineer.

Brothers who have just graduated from college will face this situation. Everyone must choose a good career and don't have a make-do mentality. It only takes a few years to make do. Time is precious and everyone should cherish it.

Microcontroller development is currently considered a relatively high-quality employment direction, and the salary is also rising.

So how to learn microcontroller? Is it difficult for undergraduates to learn microcontrollers?

First of all, we need to understand what basics are needed to learn microcontrollers?

The basic requirements for learning microcontrollers are not very high. You can learn microcontroller development even with zero basic knowledge. The so-called zero basics means that you don’t have much knowledge about microcontrollers, but you must at least graduate from high school. It will be more difficult to learn microcontrollers after graduating from junior high school.

1. How many stages are there in learning microcontroller?

Entry stage: You need to master the C language foundation of the microcontroller. At this stage, you need to master the driver of the peripheral resources of the microcontroller and understand simple digital circuit knowledge.

Intermediate stage: You need to master more digital and analog electrical circuit knowledge, especially the hardware knowledge related to the development of microcontrollers, and you can do some simple project development alone.

Advanced stage: You need to master some advanced syntax of C language, master the use of microcontroller program development pointers, structures, callback functions, etc., be able to write some lightweight architectures by yourself, and do some relatively large projects alone.

Full-stack master: Master MCU hardware development, including schematic drawing and PCB board design, and can flexibly use any MCU program development.

2. Steps to learn microcontroller from scratch

1. Select the entry type and model of microcontroller for learning

When learning about microcontrollers for introductory studies, the microcontroller we choose must be a general-purpose microcontroller, because general-purpose microcontrollers have richer information and are easier to use.

After years of development experience, it is recommended that you choose STC89C52 of the C51 series to start learning.

2. Learn the basics of C language for microcontrollers

MCU C language is the basis for MCU development, so before learning MCU, you must first master the basics of MCU C language development.

There are also a lot of learning materials for C language tutorials on the Internet. You can choose a tutorial and method that suits you.

3. Buy a development board and start learning the basics of microcontrollers

To learn microcontrollers, you still have to make some investments and spend money to buy a development board.

The development board does not have to be particularly rich in functions. Just choose the one with tutorials and the price is 100-200.

Development boards generally come with development board learning videos, including GPIO input and output, timers, interrupts, AD, serial communication, 1602LCD, digital tubes, etc. You can just follow the video to learn the basic knowledge of these microcontrollers.

4. Do some simple exercises

What we have learned previously are the basics of microcontrollers. After completing the study, you can choose to do some simple stand-alone practice projects, such as electronic clocks, intelligent street light control systems, etc.

If you are a zero-level student, it will take about 1-2 months to reach this stage. The specific time depends on the time you spend studying every day and your personal foundation.

5. Continue to improve and improve microcontroller development capabilities through actual combat

If you can do some simple microcontroller program development, it is still very difficult to find a job related to microcontrollers. You also need to accumulate some project development experience through actual combat.

Are there any relevant practical projects that you can introduce to everyone?

It is still difficult to find similar resources on the Internet, because most of these projects are corporate and patented, so it is unlikely to be shared for everyone to learn from.

Many engineers gain practical experience through actual work.

But it is difficult to find a satisfactory job without relevant experience. This is a rather embarrassing thing faced by most people.

Wuji Microcontroller Programming provides you with some similar projects. If you need it, you can search for "Wuji Microcontroller Programming" on Baidu to learn about it.

6. Improve C language knowledge and accumulate high-quality program framework

At this stage, everyone needs to learn some advanced syntax of C language, such as pointers, structures, queues, etc., in order to improve the running efficiency and framework of the program.