This learning path introduces you to the fundamentals of building Physical Computing solutions. You will learn about the various microcontroller boards and how to design and assemble circuits. You will learn programming concepts and languages with a focus on microcontrollers. You will learn about the various components that go into building a solution including sensors, controllers, input and output devices, and data transmission and communication protocols.
Physical Computing
Physical computing is a field of study and application in which a combination of hardware and software is used to create interactive systems that sense and respond to the world around them. It is a creative field that brings together computing, engineering and the arts.
Physical computing systems use microcontrollers, sensors, relays, actuators. Sensors can measure various environmental parameters around them. Relays and Actuators control output devices like lights and motors. Physical Computing solutions typically involve designing and assembling circuits with microcontrollers and various components and then programming the microcontrollers to process data.
Physical computing solutions are used extensively in applications such as smart homes, smart factories, and smart cities to automate the management of devices and appliances.
Learning Objectives
At the end of this learning path, you will have achieved the following:
- 1You will get familiar with two popular microcontroller boards, the Arduino Nano and the Raspberry Pico, and their pinouts.
- 2You will be able to connect and program each of the microcontroller boards, one in Arduino C and one in microPython, using the Arduino and Thonny IDEs.
- 3You will be able to use libraries and understand the UART, SPI and I2C protocols required to exchange data with components.
- 4You will be able to connect multiple types of sensors, controllers, input devices, and output devices to the microcontrollers and program them to read data from or send data to the components.
- 5You will be able to exchange data between the microcontroller boards using the UART protocol.
- 6You will be able to exchange data between the microcontroller boards using advanced wireless protocols including LoRa, Radio Frequency, and GSM-GPRS.
The checklist above is currently for you to manually track your completion status. We will soon be upgrading this to allow the learning objective to be checked based on the outcome of a quiz.
List of Micro Circuits
This is an indicative list, the actual circuits may vary a bit.
