Getting Started with the MSP430 Launchpad

This book was long overdue. It must be remembered too that the authors of it are trying to reach a broad audience and consequently the style may not appeal to hardcore engineers with 30+ years of experience. Having said that it WILL appeal to those that want to get started in MCU's and have NO experience with them. The MSP430 range is broad and exciting potentially and the kind of projects that one can imagine for other MCU's lie well within its' capabilities. I would thoroughly recommend this book to anyone that wants to get into programming and embedded systems or even someone that wants to learn simple skills relevant to the future of electronics.

Arduino is huge in the hobby electronics community for learning about micro controllers. For industrial applications the MSP430 from TI has long been a solid choice for new designs, and it has a very cost effective learning tool, the msp430 launchpad board (MSP-EXP430G2) which is one third the price of Arduino. The book uses a public domain IDE called energia which is similar to the Arduino IDE, as it should be - its based on both wiring and the Arduino IDE. This book is a great introduction to getting started with the msp430. If you are new to electronics and or micro controllers this is a great place to start. In increasing detail it explains how to use msp430 features, and explores interfacing to external components either discretely or using a third party discovery board with the following sensors and devices on it for around twenty five bucks at DigikeyBack-lit Character LCD DisplayDial analog potentiometer3-Axis analog accelerometerRGB LEDBuzzerMicrophoneVarious labs explore how to interface to parts on the board and the associated code to implement the interface between the circuit and to the micro controller. Each circuit is shown as a discrete circuit in case you don't have the discovery board, or just want to learn that circuit.For a beginner to MSP 430 I give this 5 stars; for people with lots of experience less. Largely because the chances are that for a lot of projects you may want to go beyond the Energia IDE and use code composer. The other reason for dropping a star is that for the sake of completeness I would have liked to have seen deeper coverage of I2C. That being said I still really like this book.All in all this is a great book, very readable, and very practical.

I gave this a one-star review because the Educational BoosterPack board used in the examples throughout the book was never manufactured! I received a call from Mouser Electronics canceling my order. Otherwise the book is a good intro to the 430. With a little work you could adapt the code to a breadboard added to the LaunchPad but that kind of negates the appeal to the novice reader the book is aimed at.

good book to get started . good examples learned a lot. hope they come out with volume 2.

Nothing you can't get on the internet. Very basic, written for using MSP430 with the arduino-style boot loader and energia. I was looking for something to bring me from the abstraction of arduino to real C on the MSP430. This will not do it. Spend the extra money and buy an engineering textbook if that is what you want.

Yikes! this thing is basic. I know it's a beginner's book, but when it goes to the trouble to point out that "electronics are everywhere" it goes over the elementary line all the way to condescending. Maybe that has to be done.... maybe that's the writing convention nowadays, but, holy cow. Maybe nobody knows C any more, but I do, so the material on C irritated me.Off the top of my head, I'd say 70% of the book could be cut. There is the usual rehash of turning on an LED. The last 30% might be useful in spots but there's not much I haven't seen elsewhere (online).I didn't have anything in particular in mind in terms of projects. But something about turning on a large motor (I dunno, maybe a garage door opener) or some other tool would have been a change. That is getting outside the arena of microprocessors, but it would have been a change from all the stuff you can download.

This book is a comprehensive one full of usefull and practical technical details and applications. Nice and good work and Thanks!

I read the book and I can say, based on experiences with the Educational BoosterPack, if it lacks the BoosterPack, the author takes laboratories based on the performance of BoosterPack indicating the components required to interact LaunchPad-breadboard. It would have been great if the author devotes a section to Capacitive Touch BoosterPack and an application to control the angular velocity in a DC motor using IDE Power. But we must recognize merit for new users they will find in this book the answers to your questions.

Excellent book for absolute beginners. Really well written with progressively more challenging concepts and projects

This book and exercises are based on a Education board that is no longer being produced.Alternative MSP430 tutorial books are available with up to date available boards to work on.

Very good!!! the subjects are presented in a clear and objective way ....Ideal for anyone looking to get into the world of microcontrollers

Gefällt mir!Diese Buch ist für den Einstieg in die Programmierung des MSP 430 nicht schlecht.Das es in Englisch geschrieben ist, dürfte kein allzu großes Problem darstellen.

I have a background in 8-bits AVR microcontrollers, this book is perfect for me to start playing with MSP430 the other popular microcontroller.