CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY
FACULTY OF ENGINEERING AND COMPUTER SCIENCE
Course Outline:
MECH 471 / MECH 6621 – Microcontrollers for Mechatronics
INSTRUCTOR:
Professor Brandon W. Gordon (Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department)
Office: EV 4.227
Email: bwgordon@encs.concordia.ca
TEXTBOOK:
There is no textbook. Lecture notes and reference material will be posted regularly at:
http://users.encs.concordia.ca/~bwgordon/mech471.html
Note: I normally don’t use Moodle.
GRADING SCHEME:
Labs / Project
Exam
60 %
40 %
The project involves groups of up to 3 students.
COURSE DESCRIPTION:
This is an introductory course to the concepts and practices of microcontrollers and their
application to the control of electromechanical devices and systems. Contents to be studied
includes: the internal architecture of microcontrollers; programming in assembly language for
specific microcontroller functions and controller algorithms; timing of the microcontroller and
interfacing with peripheral devices. The course provides hands-on experience in the form of project
work by controlling the position and speed of a DC motor with a feedback sensor.
LECTURE TOPICS:
− Introduction: microcontrollers, microprocessors, and embedded systems
− Microcontroller architecture: PIC18 microcontroller family and development tools
− Mechatronics
− Computer control
− Modelling and simulation
− C and assembly language programming for microcontrollers
− Basic input and output (parallel I/O, serial I/O)
− Interrupts and resets
− Timers, Capture/Compare/PWM (CCP) modules
− Data conversion (A/D conversion, D/A conversion)
− Additional topics (digital control, robotics, networking, etc.)
REFERENCES:
Ramesh Gaonkar, Fundamentals of Microcontrollers and Applications in Embedded Systems with
PIC, ISBN: 1401879144, Thomson Delmar, 2007
Barry B. Brey, Applying PIC18 Microcontrollers: Architecture, Programming, and Interfacing using
C and Assembly, Prentice Hall, 2008, ISBN: 0130885460
Tim Wilmshurst, Designing Embedded Systems with PIC Microcontrollers: Principles and
Applications, 2nd Edition, Newnes, ISBN: 1856177505, 2009.