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Physical Computing: Sensing and Controlling the Physical World with Computers Review by D. M. Lorenzetti
excellent scope, flawed in some details
Overall the book does an excellent job covering a wide range of logically-organized material. This ranges from getting information into a microcontroller (reading a sensor or pushbutton), to processing that information, to acting on it (e.g. running a a motor or passing it to a desktop machine).
The book is strong at the technical level. It shows actual circuits (although photos can be somewhat murky), gives code for a number of specific microcontrollers, lists part numbers, describes existing communication standards, and so on.
The book is weaker at the theoretical level. Since it doesn't often attempt to go into theory, that's mostly OK. However, the opening analogy of electricity to water flow is wrong (voltage is like water pressure, not like the speed of water). This made me wonder what other errors the book might contain, in material that I'm not so familiar with.
As a final complaint, sometimes the phrasing can be vague or confusing. Almost always the problem is clarified a few sentences on, but it's still distracting. A fairly high-profile example is the title of Chapter 6, "The 'Big Four' Schematics, Programs, and Transducers." The title is intended to convey that the chapter covers schematics, programs, and transducers for "the Big Four" (digital input, digital output, analog input, and analog output). However as a stand-alone title it conveys nothing, and trips me up since a list of three items follows a reference to "the big four." A colon or some other punctuation might help, but better would be to just call it "Handling Transducers" or something else as straightforward.
I would recommend this book to anybody interested in interfacing microcontrollers with the physical environment. However if you don't have a basic electronics background, I would suggest supplementing this book with Brindley's Starting Electronics, which introduces individual components via a very nice hands-on approach.