Week 3

Week 3:

The next major goal in my project was to learn and figure out a simple LED circuit and turn it on and off, but with some delay in between. The specific board I am experimenting with is not as popular as some Arduino boards. I am currently working with ST Electronic's STM32f0 discovery board, mostly due to the fact that the same exact microcontroller is in use with our printer head controller. It was more efficient and more controlled using a timer with a certain tick. Programmers use the system tick, which varies from different micro controllers, and pre scale it down so that each and every tick occurs every second or millisecond. This allows programmers to control a system to allow it to take a reading or a measurement every tick. Then, allowing for the system to be informed of the current state, it can then react accordingly. Which, in my case, I would be able to apply a different duty cycle or average voltage to the heater itself, allowing for it to not heat up or cool down faster than needed. With that goal finished this week my next lesson is to figure out PWM control.

-2/24/17