Silicon Labs University Program Contents
Documents and Software
UM001 — Microcontroller
This lesson is the first in the Silicon Labs University series. It assumes no previous knowledge of microcontrollers (MCUs), but some knowledge of computers and programming will be helpful. The aim of this first lesson is to give a bird's eye view of what MCUs are; applications as well as related software and hardware. Concrete examples will be given in later tutorials.
UM002 — Introduction to C
This lesson is the second in the University series. It aims to give a brief overview over the syntax and basic concepts of programming in C. The goal is to be able use C when programming microcontrollers.
UM003 — Setting Up Development Environments
This lesson will address the workflow for developing energy friendly microcontrollers. First, a general overview of parts of the toolchain will be presented, before a closer look at a Linux based toolchain. Lastly, some of the Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) available on Windows will be listed.
UM004 — Interrupts, DMA and PRS
This lesson starts with some basic theory about interrupts and it will be compared to the more basic alternative called polling. A larger code example will be presented at the end of the lesson as well as code exercises for the student to solve. The second part of this lesson goes into how the MCU can transmit signals and read and write to memory without any interaction with the processor. This is called Peripheral Reflex System (PRS) and Direct Memory Access (DMA).
UM005 — PeripheralsIn this lesson we look at how to control peripherals through manipulating registers and using library functions. Three peripherals are used as examples, but the techniques are applicable to other peripherals.
UM006 — Energy Modes
This lesson aims to provide insight into the different energy modes of EFM32™ microcontrollers. The different modes have fewer features available as the mode goes from 0 to 4 and hence decreasing energy consumption. Choosing the mode that provides the desired functionality and uses the least energy makes the application energy friendly.
UM007 — Energy Optimization
This lesson presents general energy optimization techniques as well as EFM32 specific features that can greatly reduce the power consumption of your applications. We will also see that different types of applications require different techniques – when it is unfeasible to enter low Energy Modes the use of DMA and PRS helps reducing the active energy consumption.