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Cover of RDA 113 Embedded Systems, Control and the Internet of Things

RDA 113

Embedded Systems, Control and the Internet of Things

Microcontrollers, Sensors, Actuators and Connected Devices

A microcontroller costs less than a loaf of bread and contains a processor, memory, timers, converters and communication interfaces on one chip. Programmed well, it turns the circuits of RDA 112 into intelligent devices: an irrigation controller that waters by soil moisture and reports to a farmer's phone, a robot that balances and follows a line, an incubator that holds its temperature to a tenth of a degree, a factory sensor that warns before a machine fails. Connected to a network, thousands of such devices form the Internet of Things. This book teaches how to design, program and connect them.

12 chapters in 4 parts, 196 pages. Editor-in-Chief: Olusola Sayeed Ayoola. Published by RAIN, Ibadan, 2026.

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Contents

Open a chapter to see its sections. Each chapter ends with a QR code for its free assessment.

1Embedded Systems Fundamentals
  • 1.1 What an embedded system is; real-time constraints
  • 1.2 Microcontroller architecture: CPU, memory, buses and peripherals
  • 1.3 Harvard and von Neumann architectures
  • 1.4 AVR (Arduino), ESP32 and STM32 compared
  • 1.5 Case study: scheduling an ESP32 robot controller

Take the Chapter 1 assessment

2Programming Microcontrollers in C/C++
  • 2.1 The Arduino toolchain and the setup/loop structure
  • 2.2 C/C++ essentials: types, bit manipulation and pointers
  • 2.3 Digital I/O, pull-up resistors and debouncing
  • 2.4 Timing: millis(), delays and non-blocking code
  • 2.5 Interrupts and interrupt service routines
  • 2.6 Case study: a non-blocking controller

Take the Chapter 2 assessment

3Analogue Signals and Conversion
  • 3.1 Sampling and the Nyquist theorem
  • 3.2 ADC resolution and quantisation error
  • 3.3 PWM and duty cycle; DAC behaviour
  • 3.4 Worked example: reading a temperature sensor accurately

Take the Chapter 3 assessment

4Sensors
  • 4.1 Sensor characteristics: range, resolution, accuracy and drift
  • 4.2 Temperature, humidity, light, distance and gas sensors
  • 4.3 IMUs: accelerometers and gyroscopes
  • 4.4 Calibration and filtering (moving average, complementary filter)
  • 4.5 Case study: calibrating and fusing sensors

Take the Chapter 4 assessment

5Actuators and Motor Control
  • 5.1 DC motors and H-bridges
  • 5.2 Servo motors
  • 5.3 Stepper motors and drivers
  • 5.4 Encoders and speed measurement
  • 5.5 Relays and solenoids
  • 5.6 Case study: a motor with an encoder

Take the Chapter 5 assessment

6Communication Buses
  • 6.1 UART
  • 6.2 I²C
  • 6.3 SPI
  • 6.4 Reading a datasheet and timing diagrams
  • 6.5 Case study: buses in practice

Take the Chapter 6 assessment

7Introduction to Control Systems
  • 7.1 Open-loop and closed-loop control; block diagrams
  • 7.2 On-off (bang-bang) control and hysteresis
  • 7.3 Proportional control on a microcontroller
  • 7.4 Case study: temperature control of an incubator

Take the Chapter 7 assessment

8PID Control on Embedded Devices
  • 8.1 The PID law and the role of each term
  • 8.2 Discrete implementation and sampling time
  • 8.3 Integral wind-up and derivative filtering
  • 8.4 Practical tuning (preview of RDA 211)
  • 8.5 Case study: PID for the incubator and a motor

Take the Chapter 8 assessment

9IoT Architecture
  • 9.1 Devices, gateways, cloud and applications
  • 9.2 Wi-Fi, Bluetooth LE, LoRa and GSM compared
  • 9.3 Link budgets
  • 9.4 Power budgets for battery devices
  • 9.5 Case study: choosing a radio for a farm sensor network

Take the Chapter 9 assessment

10IoT Protocols: HTTP and MQTT
  • 10.1 HTTP from a microcontroller: REST requests and JSON
  • 10.2 MQTT: brokers, topics, QoS levels and retained messages
  • 10.3 Securing devices: TLS, credentials and updates
  • 10.4 Worked example: publishing sensor data to a broker

Take the Chapter 10 assessment

11Dashboards and Cloud Platforms
  • 11.1 Node-RED and web dashboards
  • 11.2 A Flask IoT backend with a database
  • 11.3 Cloud IoT services (AWS IoT, Azure IoT Hub)
  • 11.4 Over-the-air updates
  • 11.5 Case study: a backend and a signed update

Take the Chapter 11 assessment

12Home and Industrial Automation
  • 12.1 Smart-home systems
  • 12.2 PLC concepts and ladder logic
  • 12.3 Industrial protocols (Modbus)
  • 12.4 Capstone: a connected monitoring system
  • 12.5 Case study: a ladder program, a Modbus meter and a capstone budget

Take the Chapter 12 assessment

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