PROGRAM OF THE COURSE
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Part 1 (a and b): MCU bare metal and RTOS (3+3 cfu)
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This  part  aims  at  providing  an  introduction  to
microcontrollers  (MCUs)  and  their  IDEs  for  bare  metal  applications,  and
MCUs and CPUs with RTOS.  Firstly, the HW organization of MCU and their
main  peripherals  are  presented.  Several  laboratory  activities  are
envisioned,  where  some  typical  applications  of  embedded  systems  are
developed, using, for what concerns the h/w, STM32 Nucleo, u-blox C030
and NXP FRDM-KL25Z boards, and, as IDEs, STM32CubeIDE, Keil uVision
and  VS  Code.    

Then,  the  use  of  MCUs  and  CPUs  for  embedded
applications  using  an  RTOS  is  introduced.  In  particular,  OS's  such  as
FreeRTOS and Embedded Linux are presented, considering aspects such
as base level programming (host-target, bootloader, kernel, device driver
and fs, boot, toolchain for crosscompilation, boot from scratch and access
to  peripherals)  and  user  space  programming  (git  for  versioning,  cmake,
access  to  some  peripherals,  graphics,  debugging);  typical  applications
are developed on STM32 Nucleo and/or BeagleBone boards. 

Part 2: High speed PCB design and instrumentation control (3 cfu)
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This module focuses on some fundamental aspects of development and control of electronic instrumentation.

In the first part the main techniques of "high speed" boards (PCB - Printed Circuit Bard) design 
will be described and some emblematic cases will be addressed.
Starting from the electronic schematics, professionals in the sector will teach which are the steps 
to get to the files necessary to produce a PCB.
Professional software (Altium Design) will be used and at the end of this section 
the students will have all the skills to make multi-layer PCB, in particular focusing on "high speed" and RF circuits.

The second part of the module will deal with the issue of instrumentation control, data acquisition and data processing.
We will start by giving the basics of the most used language for the management of scientific instrumentation 
(LabVIEW - the course is in fact equivalent to a "LabVIEW Base 1 course" of National Instruments 
and is taught by professionals certified as "NI developers") 
and a level will be reached for which students will be able to control and acquire data 
from various instruments (oscilloscopes, function generators, multimeters, power supplies etc, 
which will be made available) through the main communication methods 
(RS232, GPIB, Ethernet Socket TCP/IP, UDP, VXI-11).


INFORMATION ABOUT THE EXAM
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The exam aims at verifying that the student is confident with MCUs, CPUs
and, for the 9 ECTS version, advanced instrumentation for research. For
the first part, the exam consists in one project (the student can choose
between bare metal and rtos)  and an oral/practical examination. For the
second  part,  the  exam  consists  in  two  practical  exercises  (4  hours:  a
practical  exercise  with  Altium  (2  hours)  and  a  practical  exercise  with
LabView  (2  hours)),  no  oral  examination. 

As in any exam, questions are related to what has been explained in the classroom, 
so for part I they might be about e.g.
  - (STM32CubeMX) the setup of a pin for a given task
  - (STM32CubeIDE) the use of a HAL for a given task
  - the use of a NUCLEO-H7A3 for a given task
    - e.g., the use of an external peripheral
  - an example of use of uVision or VS Code
  - freertos
  - embedded linux
  - ...
Consequently,
  - students are requested to have their own PC with the necessary s/w 
    - installation and setup of the necessary s/w are considered a fondamental part of this exam
  - the teacher will provide, if needed,
    - MCU board (with USB cable)
    - breadboard, wires, external peripherals, discrete components...	
	
The exams take place in lab. Zoldan (C2 building, first floor).