Words you'll hear — EmbeddedPlayX

ACK: "Got it." A receiver pulls the line low for one bit to confirm it heard its address or data.Level 7 · Bus Battle
ADC: Analog-to-Digital Converter: measures a voltage and turns it into a number.Level 2 · Data Hunter
Address: A device's name on a shared bus. Only the device whose address is called answers.Level 7 · Bus Battle
Bit: A single 0 or 1. Eight of them make a byte; every register is one byte.
Bus: Wires shared by several devices, plus the rules for who talks when.Level 6 · Slave Adventure Level 7 · Bus Battle
Clock: A steady stream of pulses that paces everything in the chip. No clock, no work.
EEPROM: Small data memory that keeps its contents when the power goes off.Level 4 · FlashBack Fighter
Firmware: The program that lives inside a device and runs its hardware.
Fosc: The oscillator frequency you choose in OSCCON (1, 2, 4 or 8 MHz in the game).
Full duplex: Data flows both ways at the same time, like a phone call. SPI and UART work this way.Level 5 · Byte Buster Level 6 · Slave Adventure
GPIO: General-Purpose Input/Output: pins the program can read (input) or drive (output).Level 1 · Dark Light
Half duplex: One direction at a time, like a walkie-talkie. I²C works this way.Level 7 · Bus Battle
Hex: Base-16 shorthand for binary: one hex digit is exactly four bits, so 0x05 = 0000 0101.
Master / Slave: The master starts every transfer and drives the clock; slaves answer when spoken to.Level 6 · Slave Adventure Level 7 · Bus Battle
MOSI / MISO: The two SPI data wires: Master Out Slave In, and Master In Slave Out.Level 6 · Slave Adventure
Oscillator: The circuit that generates the clock. OSCCON switches it on and sets its speed.
Overflow: When a counter passes its maximum and wraps back to 0, raising a flag.Level 3 · Clock Warrior
Prescaler: A divider in front of a timer: 1:16 means one count every 16 clock pulses.Level 3 · Clock Warrior
RAM: Fast working memory. It forgets everything when the power goes off.Level 4 · FlashBack Fighter
Register (SFR): An 8-bit control panel inside the chip. Writing its bits switches hardware on, off or into a mode.
Shift register: A row of bits that moves along one place per clock beat, turning a byte into a serial stream and back.Level 5 · Byte Buster Level 6 · Slave Adventure Level 7 · Bus Battle
Synchronous / Asynchronous: Synchronous links share a clock wire (SPI, I²C); asynchronous ones agree on a speed instead (UART).Level 5 · Byte Buster Level 6 · Slave Adventure
Timer: A hardware counter that ticks with the clock, so the chip always knows exactly when.Level 3 · Clock Warrior
UART: A two-wire serial link (TX and RX) that sends bytes one bit at a time at an agreed speed.Level 5 · Byte Buster