MicroPython in a Wireless Communications Systems Course

Part of the requirements for an Electrical Engineering Technology program and/or Computer Engineering Technology program includes the ability for students to design and implement embedded systems in a variety of courses. One typical course is wireless communications systems, and this can be offered as a lower-division or upper-division course. Due to the free and open source software availability of Python, and its popularity, a small subset of the Python standard library (called MicroPython) is optimized to run on a variety of microcontrollers for embedded applications. Additionally, some of these microcontrollers have wireless capabilities. One such device includes the Digi XBee 3 module, which implements the Zigbee, 802.15.4, and BLE protocols. Another device is the ESP8266 Wi-Fi module. These devices are inexpensive and suitable for embedded applications in a wireless communications systems course. The Community Edition of PyCharm is available for free and can be used as the software development environment. The goal of this paper is to introduce a series of labs that can be used within this course. Possible topics for lab projects include: network connectivity, analog-to-digital conversion, sensor data collection, pulse-width modulation, digital input/output, serial communication (UART), serial peripheral interface (SPI) protocol, and inter-integrated circuit (I2C) protocol. For lab projects, engineering requirements, flowcharts, schematics, and results are provided.