British Columbia Institute of Technology

During my second year of EE at BCIT, I took the course ELEX 3305 (Microcontroller Systems), where we learned to program a Texas Instruments TM4C123G microcontroller in C++. We also purchased a (TI) Education Boosterpack, which is an add-on board with various analog and digital inputs/outputs, including an analog joystick, environmental and motion sensors, RGB LED, microphone, buzzer, color LCD, and more. We programmed the microcontroller in C++ and controlled it by directly manipulating the registers. Later in the course, we also wrote assembly code to do the same. This method may be considered more challenging, but it’s essential for microcontrollers lacking a library of functions for programming.

A bench power supply is an essential tool for all electronics hobbyists. Building one is the right of passage for every electrical engineer. My BCIT program included a 4-week course ELEX 1102: Electronics Fabrication Tools and Techniques, in which we built a very basic bench power supply.