The best all-around MSP430 book.

Well-written, easy to follow. The coverage is impressive for a "Basics" book. Far more than a mere re-hashing of the online MSP430 User's Guide, I like the way the CPU and peripherals are covered in a practical manner. For example, instead of just listing the assembler mnemonics, helpful tips are given about which assembly instructions to use for what purpose and which typical MCU instructions are missing. C is covered, as well, as are development environments and everything else necessary to getting up and running. Gotcha's to watch out for are given throughout. This alone makes this book worth the price of entry. I wish I had this book when I was learning to code this uC.

More explanation could be given on why certain peripheral control parameters are set up the way they are. One example is the sample code that reads the internal temperature sensor. The offset is hard-coded, as is the slope. No mention is made about this value varying widely amongst individual chips. You'll need to calibrate your readings and although the best fit values can vary by 10% of the value given, neither this fact, nor the procedure is discussed. The slope, on the other hand varies far less from chip to chip, but no explanation for how it was arrived at is given, either. (The slope given is derived from the equation in the TI MSP430 User's Guide, adjusted for Celsius, and should be close enough for most applications, but it would have been helpful to most users if this were explained, as well as how to get the result in degrees Fahrenheit.)

There are similar issues with other peripheral sample code, but this does not purport to be an advanced-level book, even though it is so comprehensive that it seems like it could easily be taken that way. With the word "basics" in its title, it's hard to complain -- you get more than what you bargained for anyway.

There are other MSP430 books available with good information, but they either have a slant toward a particular 3rd party development board, or are not as well rounded as this one. No others have the depth of coverage: development environments, development boards, processor variations, software, hardware architecture, the newer 430X architecture, and all on-board peripherals.

More than just a basics book with an excellent overview of the MSP 430 uC, it's a great source of programming tips, where details are given, including examples of interfacing with external hardware (ADC, DAC, parallel port I/O, serial I/O, etc.). I think "Essentials" would be a more appropriate title.

If you're serious about learning to program the MSP430, this is the first book to get. You may not need another.