My first experience doing work using MCU was when I work as engineer in one of Japannese multinational company in Malaysia. I was not involve in any embedded product development. I was a design engineer for department that produce TV tuner. The tuner that we use at that time, use Texas Instrument PLL IC for controlling the local oscillator. It is control using I2C protocol. The device that use to send I2C signal to the tuner came from Japan and we had to buy it quite expensive. No one at that time knew how to make our own.
Later, I met this one customer name Mr Vakku. He was embedded engineer developing firmware for LCD TV for one of the company in Shah Alam. I ask him how to get started using MCU because i know it could solve our I2C tuner problem. He asked me to buy one book title "Programming and Customizing PICmicro Microcontrollers" by Myke Predko. (You can get the book from Amazon.com).
The reason he recommend the book for beginner because the book come with a PCB and software to make the MCU programmer. With that, I went to "jalan pasar", quite famous place for electronics hobbyist in Malaysia to get their electronics components. Then, I assemble and solder the component and the programmer finally done.
The MCU I used is the Microchip PIC16F84A. It was chosen because a lot of example in the book was base on that and you could find huge resource on the net base on the IC. Then, when I got free times I slowly learn and develop the product using the IC. Finally I manage to develop a breadboard design for the I2C PLL controller.
Unfortunately, before I could show the design to my management, I resign from the company because I got better opportunities. Whatever it is, the knowledge that I gain from doing that stuff valuable to me until today.
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