Think Digitally
The microcontroller world is a digital one. Digital usually refers to discrete, noncontinuous information. We’ve touched on a few examples already—true or false, yes or no, high or low, and one or zero. These datasets are discrete, in that it’s either one or the other. This type of data is what we call digital.
The brain of our LaunchPad can only process digital data and handle this digital information within a series of bits. For our MSP430 LaunchPad, the brain is a 16-bit processor. This means that most of its operations, datasets, and instructions are done 16-bits at a time. Each of these bits can either represent a “1” or a “0.” It’s pretty amazing what we can do with just these two numbers!
6.1 Binary: 0+1=65,536 ...
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