PWM pin of microcontroller, what is it for?

embedded microcontroller
LEMUEL ADANE picture LEMUEL ADANE · Feb 18, 2011 · Viewed 14.2k times · Source

I always see PWM pin in microcontrollers, like in PIC what is/are the use of it?

Answer

Lundin picture Lundin · Feb 18, 2011

While PWM is indeed used for motor control, I'd say the main use for PWM is digital to analog conversion, in case the MCU doesn't have a DAC on chip (they most often don't). The PWM duty cycle can be used to represent an analog value, if you connect the PWM output to an op amplifier. This is a quite common design in all kinds of applications.

Most kinds of systems reglating something is using a PWM + an op amp to give an analog output, which can be used to control some sort of hardware. Then this analog output can be read back into the MCU, through an analog to digital converter, and the MCU can alter the PWM duty cycle accordingly.

Related questions

Power off an USB device in software on Windows

I would like to power cycle an USB device through software on Windows. I am doing development on a small USB power microcontroller. This chip will revert to native behavior on a power cycle and allow a code download. Since …

Read More
UART vs I2C vs SPI for inter-processor communication between microcontrollers

I am examining a way to connect two microcontrollers. On the level of serialization I am thinking of using Nano protobuffers (http://code.google.com/p/nanopb/). This way I can encode/decode messages and send them between two processors. …

Read More
What language to learn for microcontroller programming?

I'm getting into microcontroller programming and have been hearing contrasting views. What language is most used in the industry for microcontroller programming? Is this what you use in your own work? If not, why not? P.S.: I'm hoping the …

Read More