This book offers a comprehensive and balanced introduction to the design of small embedded systems. Important topics covered include microcontroller architectures, memory technologies, data conversion, serial protocols, program design, low power design, and design for the real time environment. The final chapter ingeniously applies systematic engineering design principles to embedded system design. While the Microchip PIC 16F84 is used extensively to illustrate the early material, examples elsewhere are drawn from a range of microcontroller families, leading to a broad view of device capabilities.