This is a highly-practical guide for Hobbyists, Engineers and Scientists wishing to build measurement and control systems to be used in conjunction with a local or even remote Personal Computer.
The book covers both hardware and software aspects of designing typical embedded systems based on personal computers running the Windows operating system. It's use of modern techniques in detailed, numerous examples has been designed to show clearly how straightforward it can be to create the interfaces between digital and analog electronics, programming and Web-design. Hardware developers will discover how use of latest high-level language constructs overcomes the need for specialist programming skills.
Software developers will appreciate how a better understanding of circuits will enable them to optimize related programs, including drivers. There is no need to buy special equipment or expensive software tools in order to create embedded projects covered in this book. You can build such quality systems quickly using popular low-cost electronic components and free, distributed software tools. Some knowledge of basic electronics plus the very basics of C and C# programming only is required.
With an emphasis on learning by doing, readers are encouraged by examples to program with ease; the book provides clear guidelines as to the appropriate programming techniques "on the fly". Complete and well-documented source code is provided for all projects. If you want to learn how to quickly build applications able to collect, process and display data on a PC from various analog and digital sensors, then even how to pass this data via a network and more then this is the book for you