This book provides a broad and systematic introduction to microcontrollers. Through focusing on the 8051 8-bit microcontroller and its variants, the text aims at helping students learn about modern microcontroller interfacing and applications. For use with design projects, this book also provides numerous more complicated examples to explore the functions and applications of the 8051. * Presents basic concepts of computer hardware and software, microcontroller applications, the 8051 addressing modes, a subset of the 8051 instructions, and the program execution process. * Each chapter starts with a list of objectives. * Every subject is presented in a step-by-step manner. * Background issues are presented before the specifics related to each 8051 function are discussed. * Numerous examples are presented to demonstrate the use of each 8051 I/O function * Procedural steps and flowcharts are used to help the reader to understand the program logic in most examples. * Each chapter concludes with a summary and numerous exercises and lab assignments. * Suggestions as to the order of content coverage are included in the preface for courses which teach using different models of microcontrollers.