Exploring different microcontrollers less than $1 • Hacker News Board

Re: Exploring different microcontrollers less than $1

#101

Post by LeifCarrotson » Mon, Nov 06, 2017, 1:48 PM UTC

vidarh wrote: post #89

koancone wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why was it written, what is the motivation of the author?

From the first sentences of this article: > As an embedded design consultant I know that for my own part, a lot of what I blog when I blog tends to be motivated either from increasing my professional visibility or because it's something I spend time doing anyway and where I figure I it'll be useful to someone (I know I've done it right whenever I find my own blog posts in search results a couple of years later and th…

And it works, depending on who you are trying to reach.

I know that this article has me completely convinced that Jay could be extremely effective assisting with any of my projects. Much more so than any Ivy League diplomas, years of experience or lack thereof, glossy brochures, testimonials, or other conventional marketing tools. And it's significantly more effective than any FizzBuzz quiz I could administer to potential candidates.

For all the foibles of business politics, expert opinion from within the organization is extremely persuasive when it's available (though an organization that really needs Jay's services because they have no internal experts would have a hard time using this article).

Re: Exploring different microcontrollers less than $1

#102

Post by oneweekwonder » Mon, Nov 06, 2017, 1:55 PM UTC

drcongo wrote: post #36

alister wrote: post #11

If I hadn't seen this article on Hacker News today, is there any combination of plausible keywords I could have typed into Google to find this particular article if I were looking for an in-depth review of microcontrollers? I tried "best microcontrollers reviewed", "best low-cost microcontrollers", "survey of microcontrollers", and a bunch of others. Nothing that Google finds in the first 10-20 hits is as good this r…

I've noticed some _very_ odd things going on with Google Search results recently. The other day I tried a search for an error message from SQLAlchemy, the results were poor so I added the word `SQLAlchemy` to the query and it removed _all_ answers about databases and returned a bunch of stuff about mineral mining.

Are you familiar with duckduckgo.com stack overflow integration?

It will pickup your search is technical and embed the best stack overflow answer it could find. Sometimes with a code snippet.

Re: Exploring different microcontrollers less than $1

#103

Post by jokoon » Mon, Nov 06, 2017, 1:56 PM UTC

Well at this point all I would like to get is a USB-powered linux in a card, with wifi, optionally with a screen capable enough to display 3 or 4 lines of text.

I mean raspberry is cool, cheap and everything, but I'd prefer something all integrated, as small as the raspberry pi zero, less fragile (meaning I can put in my pocket or bag, and still expect it to work), not necessarily with pins.

I don't know about what the demand is for micro-controllers, but as a consumer and a developer, having a wifi-capable portable micro computer would really be cool.

Does it already exist? Under $50?

Re: Exploring different microcontrollers less than $1

#104

Post by radix07 » Mon, Nov 06, 2017, 2:03 PM UTC

abetusk wrote: post #55

The most relevant part for me is this cherry picked line from the article: ... Consequently, the megaAVR remains the most open-source 8-bit microcontroller on the market — by a long shot. ... Even though the Atmel AVRs aren't the fastest, or cheapest (in cost per unit) or the toolchain isn't the easiest to use or the debugging capabilities aren't as good, the fact that it's open-source makes it win, hands down. There…

Open source hardware in the microcontroller world isn't quite as big of a deal as it is in the software world. While it would be great to see the processor architecture and all, I would much rather have an ARM that I know works and won't have to look at. I believe modern Arduinos are going to Cortex processors which are ARM as well, so I don't think the open source claim is what keeps Arduino hardware going. It is most likely going to be ease of use, accessibility, community and the tools.

Re: Exploring different microcontrollers less than $1

#105

Post by j_s » Mon, Nov 06, 2017, 2:05 PM UTC

What is the minimum horsepower to build a WiFi KVM? The monitor part seems toughest; if it's possible to do so cheaply I don't care how fast it updates.

I plan on trying out this $12 ESP8266-based device which ships configured as a USB serial port -- I plan on using it as a serial console. It would be awesome if I could convince it to somehow act as a USB VGA-enough and see both the boot/BIOS screens and the OS GUI.

https://github.com/whid-injector/WHID

Re: Exploring different microcontrollers less than $1

#106

Post by _b8r0 » Mon, Nov 06, 2017, 2:05 PM UTC

jokoon wrote: post #103

Well at this point all I would like to get is a USB-powered linux in a card, with wifi, optionally with a screen capable enough to display 3 or 4 lines of text. I mean raspberry is cool, cheap and everything, but I'd prefer something all integrated, as small as the raspberry pi zero, less fragile (meaning I can put in my pocket or bag, and still expect it to work), not necessarily with pins. I don't know about what t…

Not quite, and for various reasons.

What would you want by way of input on such a device? I've been working on something like this based on TI OMAP CPUs, and the hardest thing (after a decent semi-open SoC) is getting a decent keyboard.

I think the N800 was probably the pinnacle of handheld Linux devices (or the Psion 5 series if you step outside of Linux). You could look at the Raspberry Pi handheld game console options out there, but ultimately there's little that can compete with a Pi Zero, battery pack and ILI9341 screen on price.

Re: Exploring different microcontrollers less than $1

#107

Post by davandg » Mon, Nov 06, 2017, 2:12 PM UTC

jokoon wrote: post #103

Well at this point all I would like to get is a USB-powered linux in a card, with wifi, optionally with a screen capable enough to display 3 or 4 lines of text. I mean raspberry is cool, cheap and everything, but I'd prefer something all integrated, as small as the raspberry pi zero, less fragile (meaning I can put in my pocket or bag, and still expect it to work), not necessarily with pins. I don't know about what t…

I think that Linus is too heavy for a very cheap "CPU". If by Linux you mean "something easy to develop on", then most micro-controllers come nowadays with an Arduino compatible layer.

If you remove the Linux part from your wishlist, you can consider some "NodeMCU" boards on Chinese websites, eg: https://www.banggood.com/Wemos-NODEMCU-ESP8266-12F-WiFi-1_30... https://www.banggood.com/Wemos-TTGO-WiFi-Bluetooth-Battery-E...

Re: Exploring different microcontrollers less than $1

#108

Post by abetusk » Mon, Nov 06, 2017, 2:14 PM UTC

radix07 wrote: post #104

abetusk wrote: post #55

The most relevant part for me is this cherry picked line from the article: ... Consequently, the megaAVR remains the most open-source 8-bit microcontroller on the market — by a long shot. ... Even though the Atmel AVRs aren't the fastest, or cheapest (in cost per unit) or the toolchain isn't the easiest to use or the debugging capabilities aren't as good, the fact that it's open-source makes it win, hands down. There…

Open source hardware in the microcontroller world isn't quite as big of a deal as it is in the software world. While it would be great to see the processor architecture and all, I would much rather have an ARM that I know works and won't have to look at. I believe modern Arduinos are going to Cortex processors which are ARM as well, so I don't think the open source claim is what keeps Arduino hardware going. It is mo…

I agree that open source hardware isn't as big of a deal (yet?) as open source software but the open source that we're talking about here is mostly software in the form of Arduino libraries to drive modules and other chips.

I think the major point is that "ease of use, accessibility, community and the tools" are exactly where the open source software model thrives over a walled garden one. It's not impossible to do this with proprietary software but for the open source projects that are successful, they tend to be successful because the freedom they offer encourages each of those points (imo).

Re: Exploring different microcontrollers less than $1

#109

Post by tyingq » Mon, Nov 06, 2017, 2:17 PM UTC

jokoon wrote: post #103

Well at this point all I would like to get is a USB-powered linux in a card, with wifi, optionally with a screen capable enough to display 3 or 4 lines of text. I mean raspberry is cool, cheap and everything, but I'd prefer something all integrated, as small as the raspberry pi zero, less fragile (meaning I can put in my pocket or bag, and still expect it to work), not necessarily with pins. I don't know about what t…

Find a low end, low resolution, Android tablet or phone that can be rooted. There are many under $50.

Re: Exploring different microcontrollers less than $1

#110

Post by TeMPOraL » Mon, Nov 06, 2017, 2:34 PM UTC

ksangeelee wrote: post #88

alister wrote: post #11

If I hadn't seen this article on Hacker News today, is there any combination of plausible keywords I could have typed into Google to find this particular article if I were looking for an in-depth review of microcontrollers? I tried "best microcontrollers reviewed", "best low-cost microcontrollers", "survey of microcontrollers", and a bunch of others. Nothing that Google finds in the first 10-20 hits is as good this r…

It's been on my mind for a while that I could use a search engine that's seeded only with sites that contain little or no advertising or tracking. A starting point could even be the corpus of HN articles and comments, perhaps augmented with entries from the Common Crawl archives and traditional crawling. I tend to be interested in novel and creative work, and it seems to me that most of the sites I find most rewardin…

I'd buy a subscription to such a site.

Over the last 1.5 decade I've been seriously on-line I developed this heuristic: quality of content is inversely proportional to advertising, and also inversely proportional to page bloat.