Hello all, I apologize for the noob question but I couldn't find an answer in search with exactly what I wanted.

I'm an EE student hoping to learn about how to use microcontrollers. I took a course on microcontrollers but honestly I couldn't even tell you how to turn it on. I do still have the board though (PIC 18F4550) so I am looking for a good resource (online tutorial, ebook, book, etc) that explains what I need to know, preferably in a scripting language (not pbp or assembly language), unless assembly language is critical.

The goal for the end of the summer is to have a microcontroller automate house functions such as turning on lights, fans, music, etc by voice recognition (as seen here http://absolutemaximumratings.com/projects_stephanie.php ). I have no idea where I would even look for how to do that, so I'm starting with microcontrollers.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks a lot

 

The PIC18F4550 is a pretty decent chip, I've used it a few times. I really don't recommend trying to learn assembler on them, better to use one of the 33 instruction cores for that. The C18 compiler for it is a free download too.

The Microchip Forums is always a good place to ask. Poke around and you will find little gems like this