What's an MCU?
When the Ocellus project began, its Project Head came from healthcare and behavioral science—not electrical engineering. So when the engineers started talking about selecting an “MCU,” the first question was pretty basic:
What's an MCU?
A microcontroller unit, or MCU, is essentially the small computer at the heart of an embedded electronic device. It combines a processor, memory, and interfaces for communicating with sensors and other electronics on a single chip.
For Ocellus, choosing one meant learning enough to ask the right questions: How much processing power do we need? How much memory? How will it communicate with our sensors? How much energy will it consume? How difficult will it be to program—and how physically large is it?
Lesson learned: leading an R&D project doesn't require knowing everything. It does require learning enough to know what questions to ask.
