Microcontrollers are programmable chips used to control and interface electronic devices. 8051 microcontroller, also known as AT89C51 popularly, is one of the most widely used microcontrollers. Manufactured by Atmel, It is among the favorites of hobbyist’s and undergraduate students.
Once the controller is programmed, it needs to be tested for the specified task it is programmed for. Different vendors sell their evaluation boards and devleopment kits for this purpose, but these boards are somewhat expensive. As one can easily save 90$ or so by building a basic generic board, why waste the money?
When I took the course of microcontrollers, I decided to come up with my own design of this testing board, what I call the “GENERIC BOARD” (general purpose testing board) for 8051 Microcontroller.
I performed all of my lab tasks and a final semester project of an Air Mouse on this board. The Development Boards offered by Atmel for their 89C51 microcontroller cost around 100$. They ofcourse are better equipped with LCD displays as well, but this board does the basic job in a fantastic manner. One can do almost all kind of projects on this and develop the essential hardware required for the project on another PCB.
Design Specifications
This 8051 Generic board was designed on Express PCB software (Click to download Express PCB for free). The design is simple and requires some basic components.
- All the ports of 8051 can be accessed at the same time.
- Bidirectional buffers 74LS245 are there on each port as a protection. There are switches to control the direction of buffers .
- Cream shells and female connectors gives the external connectivity to the ports on both sides of the buffers.
- LED banks are connected to each port to display the status of each port.
- Two 7-Segment displays are also there on the board.
- Separate LED banks isolated from the 8051 ports are also present on the board.
- There are two versions of the board, one is with serial port and other without serial port.
Design Schematics
Following are the design schematic explanation. There are two designs, one is with serial poat and other is without serial port.
- Design explanation of board without serial port.pdf
- Design explanation of board with serial port.pdf
The following are the design files in pdf format
Following are the design files in .pcb format (express pcb software)
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