A microcontroller is a highly integrated chip (or IC- a small electronic device made out of a semiconductor material) that contains all the electronic components needed to control electronic devices. These components include: a Central Processing Unit (CPU), Random Access memory (RAM), Read Only Memory (ROM), Input/Output ports (I/O ports) and timers.

The microcontroller is an indispensable component for any person who wants to do electronics and it is used in a very wide variety of electronic systems around us: Keyboards, electronic measurement instruments, Printers, Cell Phones, Alarm systems and many more.

There is a large number of companies that manufacture microcontrollers, one of them being Atmel. One of Atmel's newest product lines is the AVR Microcontroller family. The AVR is a family of 8 bit high performance microcontrollers with low power consumption. The family comprises of three groups: tinyAVR, AVR, and MegaAVR. The three groups differ in the number of pins and size, but have the same instruction set and overall architecture.

#6 is a simple, easy to use development board based on the ATMega32 AVR. Once you have built and set up a #6 board, you will be able to write simple programs to perform complex tasks with your microcontroller.

A very important document to keep at hand when working with a microcontroller is its datasheet. Download the ATmega32 datasheet here and look through it. Although the information will not make a lot of sense at this early stage, it will be useful once you are more proficient in microcontroller programming.

In this #6 tutorial, we will make and stuff, or populate, a #6 PCB.  A Printed Circuit Board is a flat base of insulating material containing a pattern of conducting material. It becomes an electrical circuit when stuffed, that is when components are soldered to it.

links:

• microcontroller tutorial
• newbie's guide to AVR development (very good link)
• wikipedia microcontroller page