Tim Wilmshurst was born in West Africa, where he spent his early years and started his schooling. From childhood he was fascinated with how things worked, and spent many hours making models, or taking things to pieces and hoping to put them back together again.

After playing with the idea of a career in professional music, Tim was drawn first into engineering design and then into education. He has had two spells working in the Engineering Department of the University of Cambridge, one in Botswana Polytechnic, and is currently Head of Electronics at the University of Derby. At Cambridge he had the privilege of contributing to much ground-breaking research through his designs, focussing mainly on control and instrumentation. This included work in the fields of aerospace, geotechnical, medical and motor vehicle. He also claims to have introduced the first microprocessor into the British Houses of Parliament, and the first microcontroller into the Kalahari Desert!

Tim believes in learning by doing, and aims to share his fascination with how things work, and how to devise new or different things. He has developed the Derbot project, which encourages students to develop inventive autonomous vehicles, based on a given core design.

Tim's books encapsulate his teaching and design work; all are supported on his web site, at www.embedded-knowhow.co.uk.

Tim also enjoys long distance cycling and hiking, playing the violin, and family life.

PIC microcontrollers are used worldwide in commercial and industrial devices. The 8-bit PIC which this book focuses on is a versatile work horse that completes many designs. An engineer working with applications that include a microcontroller will no doubt come across the PIC sooner rather than later. It is a must to have a working knowledge of this 8-bit technology.

This book takes the novice from introduction of embedded systems through to advanced development techniques for utilizing and optimizing the PIC family of microcontrollers in your device. To truly understand the PIC, assembly and C programming language must be understood. The author explains both with sample code and examples, and makes the transition from the former to the latter an easy one. This is a solid building block for future PIC endeavors.

New to the 2nd Edition:

*Include end of chapter questions/activities moving from introductory to advanced

*More worked examples

*Includes PowerPoint slides for instructors

*Includes all code snips on a companion web site for ease of use

*A survey of 16/32-bit PICs

*A project using ZigBee

*Covers both assembly and C programming languages, essential for optimizing the PIC

*Amazing breadth of coverage moving from introductory to advanced topics covering more and more complex microcontroller families

*Details MPLAB and other Microchip design tools