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MICROCONTROLLERS MADE EASY

1 TYPICAL MICROCONTROLLER APPLICATIONS

Microcontrollers are frequently found in home appliances (microwave oven, refrigerators, tel-

evision and VCRs, stereos), computers and computer equipment (laser printers, modems,

disk drives), cars (engine control, diagnostics, climate control), environmental control (green-

house, factory, home), instrumentation, aerospace, and thousands of other uses. In many

items, more than one processor can be found.

Figure 5. Typical MCU Applications

While microprocessors target the maximum processing performance, the purpose of micro-

controllers is to implement a set of control function in the most cost effective way. Although

accomplished with an ST6.

In a typical application, the MCU has to manage several tasks according to their priority or to

the occurrence of external events (new command send by the keyboard, external temperature

rise,...)

Figure 6. Example of MCU Task Management.

The ability to manage control tasks by hardware or by software is the main performance indi-

cator for MCUs.

KEYLESS

TV SET

CAR RADIO

TELEPHONE SET

MONITOR

KEYBOARD

REMOTE

CONTROL

BATTERY CHARGER

DIMMER

SWITCH

REMOTE

METER

DASHBOAD

FRONT PANEL

BODY CONTROLLER

VR02101E

FUNCTION

KEYBOARD

SCANNING

MEASURE

TEMPERATURE

CHANGE

INFORMATION

DISPLAY

CENTRAL MCU

TEMPERATURE