In this paper, we present an approach for programming microcontrollers that provides more expressivity and safety than a low-level language approach traditionally used to program such devices. To this end, we provide various abstraction layers (abstraction of the microcontroller, of the electronic components of the circuit, and of concurrency) which, while being adapted to the scarce resources of the hardware, offer high-level programming traits for the development of embedded applications. The various presented abstractions make use of an OCaml virtual machine able to run on devices with limited resources and take advantage of the expressivity and extensibility of the language. We illustrate the interest of our work on both entertainment applications and embedded software examples.