Back when we began our journey as engineers and needed to build a machine that could respond to sensors and create an output to motors, lights, etc. We had to connect the sensors to individual components which then went into a custom hard wired logic board then out to the active components.
This was a laborious task because we had to manually wire in timing circuits to create the logic steps.
Now with a microcomputer all we need to do is hook up the input sensors and the active components and simply program in the logic steps.
Click on "Micro-Computer Projects" on the left to view projects we have done.