All About Serial
What are serial protocols?
I2C, SPI, and UART are three of the most common protocols for serial data transmission. An overview of these protocols can be found here:
Choosing transistors for high-power digital switching
Microcontrollers make wonderful “brains” for embedded systems, but are severely limited in the amount of current they can supply to an external device. In order to determine the amount of current a microcontroller can supply (or sink) with an output pin, open the data sheet and look for the section describing “Absolute Maximum Ratings”. There, there should be a specification described as the maximum current for a single GPIO pin (see example, Figure 1).
