I don't know of any good local resource... I got into ucontrollers last year when I built a microcontroller-based digital microvoltmeter for Research Electronic (PHYS 685).
I used a PIC18F2550 8-bit microcontroller (they give out free samples at Microchip.com :-), but later I also tried Atmel AVR devices, which have nearly identical capabilities but a much more rational, orthogonal instruction set. The PIC and AVR microcontrollers are excellent because they are mass-produced, cheap, and there are a lot of hobbyists using them (see www.piclist.com and www.avrlist.com). Both families offer all kinds of goodies like on-chip ADCs, LCD drivers, oscillators, PWM various serial communications protocols, Flash EEPROM, and general-purpose I/O pins which can sink/source enough current to light an LED. In any case, interfacing to a computer is not hard at all. I built a parallel-port programmer/interface device and heavily modified some Linux software to communicate with it. If any of this stuff sounds useful, let me know and I can dig up some code and docs for you. Dan On Tue, 2006-11-14 at 10:45 -0500, Alan Bromborsky wrote: > Is there any local resource or local interest group for using > micro-controllers under linux. I am looking for someone to talk to > about using a micro-controller to control a stepper motor driver for the > purpose of building a robotic telescope tracking system. A linux laptop > would send high level commands to the micro-controller.
