The mbed platform is becoming widely used in academic circles for teaching embedded systems at undergraduate level, and within companies where often there is a need to self-teach or be trained in new microcontroller skills. We think this is a good thing as the mbed allows quick engagement in advanced topics. To facilitate further we are putting together a set of course notes to help academic and workshop tutors teach, using mbed as the platform. The notes are in the form of presentation slides, so can be used as standalone pre-developed content as well as taking things further with extended topics and projects.

The provisional content of the course notes is outlined below. Obviously it is not possible to cover every mbed topic in this way, but we have chosen the topics that allow a quick introduction to the most commonly used technologies and interfaces while providing the background design and programming skills to allow students to learn effectively.

The mbed course notes content and structure is as follows:

• Digital input and output (/media/uploads/robt/mbed_course_notes_-_digital_input_and_output.pdf)
• Analogue input and output (coming soon)
• Pulse width modulation (under development)
• Modular design and programming (under development)
• Parallel data and communication (under development)
• Serial communication with I2C (under development)
• Serial communication with SPI (under development)
• Timers and interrupts (under development)
• Memory and data management (under development)

There are ten topics which have been chosen to naturally support a 12 week undergraduate course, or a workshop run over a few days. In all cases examples and exercises are provided to support hands on learning. Of course, we also hope the slides stand as a useful self learning programme for anyone new to the mbed.

We'd really like to receive feedback and suggestions from potential tutors as we develop these slides so please feel free to offer feedback in the comments section of this page.

These slides have been written by Rob Toulson (Anglia Ruskin University) and Tim Wilmshurst (University of Derby). A supporting academic textbook is also being considered.