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The Amazing $1 Microcontroller (2017)

jaycarlson.net

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Re: The Amazing $1 Microcontroller (2017)

#161

Post by close04 »

fenwick67 wrote: post #149
cr0sh wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you in the United States? I'm just curious how your homeowner's insurance feels about this? That is, will they still pay out for a claim should something happen, and they determine your modifications were at fault? Because if the adjuster or whomever does find you have such modifications - they -will- blame those. And probably deny your claim and coverage (and probably cancel your policy). At least that would lik…

"Because if the adjuster or whomever does find you have such modifications - they -will- blame those. And probably deny your claim and coverage (and probably cancel your policy)." I'm skeptical that an insurance company will be able to determine exactly what part you used and if it was UL listed unless you yourself tell them

If an incident occurs and they identify additional components connected to the "trigger" you'd have to provide the whole "paper trail" for every single bit of your setup and show that it's above board: were the components certified for the use, were they installed by authorized personnel, were they operated properly, was the code you wrote for it to blame, etc. If you handled all the implementation yourself then it's hard to pass the responsibility along. While not impossible, it's still a high bar. And you wouldn't be in the best position to fight.

If it's an electrical fire and they find modifications to the electrical wiring the chances of getting the insurance money are slim. Unless those modifications are explicitly covered by the insurance.

Given the kind of exposure insurance companies have they are willing to invest a lot in fighting the payout. It's their business model.

Re: The Amazing $1 Microcontroller (2017)

#162

Post by neya »

foobarian wrote: post #80
magicalhippo wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You also need to include fuses and other safety circuitry to ensure it doesn't exceed that threshold your microcontroller can accept. I'd say you need to include other safety circuitry, as well as proper PCB design, to make sure it doesn't start a fire. If you don't know what you're doing, don't rely on random stuff from AliExpress etc to be grid safe, and don't try to make stuff that connects to the grid yourself.…

I would be terrified of any kind of relay there. I had a few relays fail on my furnace such that they burned a 1" diameter hole in the PCB.

High power relays with safety certifications are typically used in mains boxes available commercially. In fact, I'm using the ones from my old mains box.

Even theoretically, the only way a relay could catch fire if the coil inside overheats or if you pass very high voltages to the coil. But, with a well designed circuit, it should be fine.

Re: The Amazing $1 Microcontroller (2017)

#163

Post by unwind »

candiodari wrote: post #155

Anyone know a good microcontroller with at least 3 DACs ?

Did you look in the STM32 line?

The first I found was the STM32F3x4 line [1], they have up to 3 DACs with 12-bit precsion it sounds like.

Not sure about pricing, a quick Digikey search shows the STM32F334C4T6 listing at $3.72 in singles. ST has development boards too, didn't price those.

Re: The Amazing $1 Microcontroller (2017)

#164

Post by dkersten »

scrape_it wrote: post #121
patrickyeon wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty near all of this stuff is available from North American distributors, Adafruit/Sparkfun for more hobbyist-minded stuff, Digikey/Mouser/Newark for industry. Adafruit takes bitcoin if you're that paranoid. You're going to have a hard time getting along in the current world, especially in electronics, if anything Chinese sets you on edge though. I'm trying to be gentle, and I know you didn't ask for advice, but c…

I am considering laying off the ganja for a while. but I need it to meet deadlines, to do the work the market demands at the best possible time to the best possible consumer, I am the invisible hand that keeps pushing me, in this struggling and character building times. thanks for the advice 친구!

I know unsolicited advise is often not appreciated (for good reason sometimes), but perhaps you need to work on a better work-life balance. If you need weed to get through the day and meet tight deadlines, perhaps you need a less stressful role. Personally, I've cut back on the hours I work for this reason. Sure, I earn a lot less, but I'm much less stressed, happier and am starting to get my life (physical, mental and social health) in order.

PS: I buy most of my electronics from mouser or if its a hobbyist pre-assembled item, sparkfun/adafruit. I am just a hobbyist, though.

In any case, good luck.

Re: The Amazing $1 Microcontroller (2017)

#165

Post by rcxdude »

jwr wrote: post #139
83 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone building up some home automation I'd love to know how you are monitoring and controlling power. Remote power strips? Replacement outlets? Something diy?

For household energy usage monitoring, I installed an off-the-shelf DIN rail power meter with LEDs. I ignore the meter readout, but the LEDs give off a brief flash every Wh or so (don't remember the scale, but it was precise enough) — these flashes are processed by three phototransistors hooked up directly to I/O pins of a microcontroller, generating interrupts. This results in a safe, reliable and simple monitoring…

Nordic seem to have the best understanding of what actually makes life easier for embedded software, which is really nice. Most other vendors seem to have done a lot of work to try and make things 'easy' but don't quite seem to have understood the goal.

Re: The Amazing $1 Microcontroller (2017)

#166

Post by jononor »

tronko wrote: post #152

Stupid question, would it have some sense to use a big array of these microcontrollers to create an actual chip neural network?

Would only make sense as an art project, imo. If you want to run neural networks on micro-controllers, one ARM Cortex M4F (or M7/H7) will get you pretty far. Audio Classification with tens of classes, as well as low-resolution image classification.

Re: The Amazing $1 Microcontroller (2017)

#167

Post by xondono »

my takes from my +10 years on this sector:

- Unless you are building something with high volumes (or something trivially easy), development costs are going to be your biggest expense by far, specially firmware/software.

- Using cheap parts is nice, and if you come from the DIY world you will know many such parts. If you are going to build something commercially, avoid those things like the plague, because they will become the biggest sinkhole of technological debt.

- Software/Apps behave like high-risk investments (natural monopolies, zero-or-nothing situations, low initial costs), electronics behaves more like long term investments (high initial costs, high development path dependency). It's way more profitable to have a product you barely have to touch (but sells well), than several that need constant modifications.

Which leads me to some tips:

- There's not much sense in 8 bit / 16 bit microcontrollers for most projects nowadays. Don't fear going to 32 bit.

- MIPS/AVR are nice, but if you are building something that is not a one-off (or you plan to build on the product), go with ARM (for now).

- Build your PoC and prototypes on manufacturer libraries, but once you have the resources for it, well-thought and tailored libraries will make your life easier.

- When working on libraries, don't write them directly from the datasheet. Go for the family references, target the whole family instead of a single chip.

- Before chosing any component, specially the ones that are hard to replace, price is secondary at best. Availability is way more important.

- If you are willing to take some risk, look at Rust for embedded. The language is still 'young' and there's a lot of stuff that needs to settle down, but man, does it look good.

Re: The Amazing $1 Microcontroller (2017)

#168

Post by boomlinde »

spacedog11 wrote: post #86

The title is misleading because only the chip by itself costs $1. If you buy the microcontroller( chip + peripherals), it costs more than $1. For example MSP430: https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Texas-Instruments/MSP-E...

That's not what microcontroller means.

Re: The Amazing $1 Microcontroller (2017)

#169

Post by chillingeffect »

iheartpotatoes wrote: post #122
feistypharit wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You actually can use make instead of the Arduino IDE many times. For the ESP, check out https://github.com/plerup/makeEspArduino . It works reasonably well.

Yeah, I didn't know that existed but I created my own make environment a while back. My arduinos have been gathering dust for about 5 years, ever since I discovered the ST nucleo64 line ... 80MHz, 1M flash, 256K sram, 4 UARTs, 4 SPI, 4 I2C, 20+ GPIO, 4 ADCs for under US$15 ... I pretty much stopped using Arduino everything.

Me, too. But now that I've found the Teensy 3.6, it's my new goto. It's too expensive, but it has all the power. Also, I've been doing embedded for over 20 years and I'm starting to appreciate the simplicity of Arduino. It does get most of the job done. And when I had to modify the drivres, I was able to write completely low-level code. Only walls I've run into are tweaking the linker file. I haven't been able to locate that :(

https://www.pjrc.com/store/teensy36.html

Re: The Amazing $1 Microcontroller (2017)

#170

Post by childintime »

SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #35
childintime wrote: post #27

The Renesas RX200 family would be a nice addition to the list. I'm curious how it fares against the ARM competition. The most amazing ESP8266 also reached $1 in volume, but isn't really comparable to other MCU's, with very few pins and a crippled ADC.

>The Renesas RX200 family would be a nice addition to the list. Can you show where you're finding RX200s for under a dollar? Because... I was interested having never seen almost anything from Renesas near what I would consider a good deal. I can't seem to find anything even close [0] this being the cheapest RX200 chip I could find at $1.70 @ 5k [1] [0] https://www.digikey.com/products/en?dc=49904 [1] https://www.digi…

FYI we buy the RX231 with USB below $1 (in volumes well above 5k). You're right that Renesas doesn't compete in online stores, they don't even try.
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