RoadTest: Online Course: Microcontrollers and C Programming
Author: iayanpahwa
Creation date:
Evaluation Type: Evaluation Boards
Did you receive all parts the manufacturer stated would be included in the package?: True
What other parts do you consider comparable to this product?: TIVA C TM4C123G Launchpad
What were the biggest problems encountered?: CCS is still in beta for OSX and is quiet buggy.
Detailed Review:
REVIEW:
So I am in my final year of my Engineering Graduation and the love for Electronics and microcontrollers in general urges me to apply for this roadtest. I had previously worked with 8051, AVR, ARM7 based micrcontrollers and also played with some embedded linux single board platforms but somewhere in my mind I always wished to try my hands on MSP430 as it being a low cost yet powerful architecture and backed by such an active community of like minded, so this course gave me that chance and it was truly phenomenal how in such a short course span time it quickly becomes my favourite microcontroller and not to mentioned one another reason is that it can also be programmed in arduino like language and IDE, yes you guesses it right the ENERGIA IDE, but for this readiest I focused more on C as programming language.
UDEMY as a learning platform:
Udemy is a great learning hub, I've also opted few other courses before on udemy and my experience was great every ime, the UI is intuitive and easy and can even take it on mobile devices to watch lectures on the go 5/5 for that.
About the course:
The course is well designed for anyone who wish to get started with microcontrollers and C programming language, the lectures were short and precise with all the required information, the course handouts were very informative and contains everything needed from beginning to end, I like how each handout is divided into step by step tutorial format. The course covers everything needed from level 0, helped me brushed my skills in C programming language and learned new things. In my opinion anyone with little on no microcontrollers background can take up this course and will feel comfortable with the pace of the course and lectures delivered by instructor. The questions asked on courseware forums were answered swiftly. The handouts are great even for future reference, I've downloaded all the pdf came along with course and will have them all the time when playing with MSP430
About TI-CCS
Code composer studio is a very mature platform and a great IDE, this was my first time using CCS, though I've 2 more launchpads 1) TIVA C- TM4c123g which i generally program in keil uVision and 2) CC3200 which i mostly program using ENERGIA IDE, so this was my first time using CCS, at the very first I felt upset as there was no version for Mac OSX but later on i discovered that CCS in beta version is available for OSX as well which only allows programming MSP as of now, so I used that, its buggy sometimes, i lost usb connections and needed to replug the launchpad but it's ok as I was able to write the binaries and debug my program. Recently I discovered that there is also a cloud based version allowing coding and deploying from a browser, I haven't used that yet but will surely give it a try. At the very last it was a great experience working on Code Composer studio and it benefited me from the fact that I was able to make a small project for my company am interning with using TI CCS.
About Launchpad
Texas Instruments Launchpad is a great platform to prototype on, they are low cost and comes everything requires out of the box in a nice packaging. I loved the FR6989 because of it's LCD feature on board and after taking this course I took no time to order MSP432 launchpad as well, Launchpads no doubt has become my favourite prototyping platform since then. Currently I have no booster pack to test on my launchpad, but I've recently won a MK II Educational booster pack which I am gonna try on it.
Summary
It was a great course and learning experience, the kit includes everything needed, am working on a small robotic project using MSP430FR6989 which I am supposed to demonstrate at my college fair, I will also update it here once done. At last I'd like to thank Element14, Texas Instruments, Udemy, Prof. Mark M. Budnik (Course Instructor) and Valparaiso University for providing me with such a great learning experience.
