During development and testing of embedded systems, the serial port is used for communicating with the host. This applies to firmware based embedded systems or Linux based embedded systems. But laptops and desktops today generally do not have a serial port. At Zilogic, we hit on this problem every time we go out for a corporate training.

One solution is to use a USB-to-Serial converter. But our experience shows that the USB-to-Serial converters available in the market are hardly reliable. Fed up with the USB-to-Serial converters we decided to develop our own Remote Terminal Server, which makes the serial port available over the network.

This article describes how to build a simple 4-port Remote Terminal Server, using a Linux and various other open source tools. We hope this also serves to show how a product can be built using Linux and other Free and Open Source software components.

Resistance is the reluctance or a kind of friction in a carrier which opposes the flow of current through it. The resistance of an element is measurable and it is represented by an unit known as Ohm. Ohmmeter is a device used to measure the electrical resistance. This project shows how to construct a simple ohmmeter using 8051 microcontroller.

A GSM modem is a specialised type of modem which accepts a SIM card, and operates over a subscription to a mobile operator, just like a mobile phone. These modems are more frequently connected to computers which allow the computers to communicate with the mobile network. They are most probably used for sending/receiving SMS. This article explains how to connect a GSM modem with the ZKit-51 and how to program it to send SMS.

It is very easy to generate tones with the ZDev library and the ZKit-51. This project shows how to generate tones of various frequencies using the PWM controller.

In order to test an electronic circuit, we need some testing equipment. Capacitance meter is an electronic equipment used to measure capacitance. This project will show how to construct a simple capacitance meter using 8051 controller.

Generally Thermometer is used to measure the ambient temperature. This article explains you about how to design a simple Thermometer using a temperature sensor.

It may require some graphics image to be displayed in 8051 based products through a monochrome bitmap LCD. This is considered to be a complex task because of its bus interfacing and several command sequence handling. This article explains how a graphics LCD from TIANMA can be connected to a 8051 micro-controller and pixels can be displayed on it with simple steps.

There are variety of user input devices for embedded systems, like buttons, switches, knobs, sliders, etc. Sliders are most commonly used for volume controls. This project shows how to interface a slider to the ZKit-51, and how to use it as an input device.

BASIC is a very popular programming language taught in schools. There have been various derivatives of the BASIC programming language. The most popular ones are GW-BASIC, QBASIC and Visual Basic. In fact there are versions of BASIC for the 8051 as well, called the MCS BASIC-52.

The MCS BASIC-52, is written in assembly language, and hence is hard to extend. Mordern 8051s have large memories and hence it is possible to implement a BASIC interpreter in C. This article shows how to port a tiny BASIC interpreter to the ZKit-51.