ABSTRACT
Earlier, in Chapter 11, we introduced the PIC microcontroller as a device that is normally used in stand-alone (or embedded) applications to perform simple logic, timing and input/output control. In recent years such devices have become increasingly sophisticated in terms of both the variety of I/O peripheral facilities provided and the ability to connect to other devices in bus and networked configurations. This latter feature makes it possible to have several microcontrollers working together, exchanging data and control information, in distributed systems that can be of virtually any size.
