FEATURES OF CREATING TRAINING COURSES ON MICROCONTROLLER PROGRAMMING IN THE TRAINING OF SPECIALISTS IN THE FIELDS OF TELECOMMUNICATIONS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES

Abstract

The article considers the concept of blended learning for organizing the educational process of microcontroller programming courses in educational institutions of a technical profile. The differences between the technology of microcontroller programming and traditional programming are shown and the need to use specialized hardware and software to check the performance of the created programs in real time is substantiated. The most common models of microcontrollers used in the educational process are analyzed, in particular AVR, PIC and STM8, and the feasibility of using microcontrollers of the PIC16F84A family for the initial stages of training is also determined. Special attention is paid to the problems of distance teaching of disciplines related to microcontroller technologies, since the microcontroller software operates directly with physical signals in real time and the configuration and testing of the performance of the software product for microcontrollers takes place on real electronic devices with their own electrical circuits, which include the microcontroller. An effective solution to this problem is the creation of virtual mockups that have their own means of designing and simulating electronic circuits, which allows you to model electronic devices and test programs in a virtual mode. The universal virtual laboratory Labs created by the teachers of the International University and the specialized software PIC_Lab for creating virtual mockups designed to test the operability of the program code without using physical equipment are described. An example of such a virtual mockup "Electromechanical Clock" is given, which demonstrates the principles of controlling a Lave stepper motor. The proposed approach provides the possibility of asynchronous learning, increases the efficiency of learning the material and is suitable for both face-to-face and distance learning.