Design and development of a low-cost student experiments for teaching ARM based embedded system laboratory

In this paper, we present a bunch of experiments useful for an embedded system laboratory. It is an outcome of the author's experience in teaching computer architecture and embedded systems in theory. The experiments described herein can be implemented as one third semester laboratory course. Further, they are built around ARM based RISC processor architecture, which supports modular programming. The components including the microcontroller with programmer are inexpensive. It gives a hands-on experience to the undergraduate student of Electronics and Communication Engineering (ECE) and Computer Science Engineering (CSE), Post-Graduate students with electronics major. The salient feature of this module is that each experiment is explained by its hardware description, software development which includes dumping the hex file of the program on to the microcontroller's flash memory. Our experience with the conduct of a 120 min-end of semester practical examination show that, with the chronological increase in hardware design, the student exhibited the confidence in designing new stand-alone systems with fairly complicated hardware and software. Setting up a training laboratory of this type is easy with the material described in this paper.