Bare metal micro:bit
Twenty-one experiments in low-level programming
Welcome to the online version of my book, "Bare metal micro:bit", an experiment-based introduction to programming embedded devices at the machine level. The book shows you how to program the ARM-based BBC micro:bit in assembly language and in C, how to make programs interact with hardware devices, and later how to use a simple, embedded operating system.
The complete book will contain 21 or more experiments, each described in a separate chapter, plus supporting material. On this page I have listed the chapters in more or less the order I have uploaded them, which is also the order I suggest you read them and try the experiments. Among the first few items are instructions for obtaining and setting up the hardware and software you will need to follow the book, followed by Experiment 1, a simple task where you compile and upload a simple C program to check that everything is working properly.
If you'd like to see my plan for the whole book, then look at the contents page, which has links to all the chapters present and future. The conventions regarding the naming of files and hardware registers are a bit different in this draft of the book from previous drafts, so if you have begun to work with the software previously, I'm afraid some changes to your programming will be needed. I'll try my best to avoid making similar radical changes necessary in the future.
Chapters
- Appendix B – Software setup.
- Experiment 1 – Building a program. Check you can build and upload a simple program.
- Experiment 8 – Digital input/output. Use device registers to control I/O pins and light LEDs.
- Experiment 10 – Serial communication. Use a serial device to transmit characters.
- Experiment 11 – Interrupts for I/O. Control the serial device with interrupts to free the processor.
- Appendix A – Hardware setup.
- A note about conventions for hardware register access.
- Experiment 12 – Interrupt mechanism. Plot gaps in a waveform to measure the time needed to handle interrupts.
- Experiment 14 – Processes. Use micro:bian processes to perform multiple tasks concurrently. – a first experiment using micro:bian.
- Copyright notice and disclaimer.
Copyright © 2019–24 J. M. Spivey. All rights reserved.