$1 Microcontrollers (2017)
jaycarlson.net
$1 Microcontrollers (2017)
1–10 of 103 posts
Re: $1 Microcontrollers (2017)
#2It's amazing that humanity can produce this sort of hardware under $1. This has implications that are more profound than previous industrial revolutions.
In centuries from now, our time will be studied as a remarkably revolutionary one.
Re: $1 Microcontrollers (2017)
#3It's amazing that humanity can produce this sort of hardware under $1. This has implications that are more profound than previous industrial revolutions. In centuries from now, our time will be studied as a remarkably revolutionary one.
In fact, even $1 microcontrollers are considered very expensive by industry standards.
Cheapest micros hovered around 10 cents mark before the semiconductor crisis.
Some Padauk micros go for single cents.
Re: $1 Microcontrollers (2017)
#4This is a good article but it's a few years old, and out of date now. I can't see its date with my current adblock settings. It would be great if someone could find it and put it in the title.
There are stupendously powerful $1 microcontrollers now, including the RP2040 (dual core cortex m0+ with 264KB ram on the chip), ESP32-S2 (Espressif core with 400k of ram and wifi), and ESP32-C3 with wifi and RISC-V core and again something like 400k of ram.
Jay Carlson also has a series about microcontrollers as cheap as THREE CENTS, i.e. the famous Padauk 3 cent MCU:
https://jaycarlson.net/2019/09/06/whats-up-with-these-3-cent...
Re: $1 Microcontrollers (2017)
#5It's amazing that humanity can produce this sort of hardware under $1. This has implications that are more profound than previous industrial revolutions. In centuries from now, our time will be studied as a remarkably revolutionary one.
I find it amazing as well, now we can sleep at night knowing progress will potently progress.
Re: $1 Microcontrollers (2017)
#6It's amazing that humanity can produce this sort of hardware under $1. This has implications that are more profound than previous industrial revolutions. In centuries from now, our time will be studied as a remarkably revolutionary one.
Given our love for destruction, and ongoing events, it will be talked about the same way as we talk about Babylon, Egypt, Sumerian, ancient Roman and Greece, Aztecs and Mayas.
Re: $1 Microcontrollers (2017)
#7This is a good article but it's a few years old, and out of date now. I can't see its date with my current adblock settings. It would be great if someone could find it and put it in the title. There are stupendously powerful $1 microcontrollers now, including the RP2040 (dual core cortex m0+ with 264KB ram on the chip), ESP32-S2 (Espressif core with 400k of ram and wifi), and ESP32-C3 with wifi and RISC-V core and ag…
> It would be great if someone could find it and put it in the title.
There's no publication date -nor anything marking it as updated at any time afterwards- on the article itself, but first comments are from November 2017 and passing references in the article point to "end of 2017" too.
Re: $1 Microcontrollers (2017)
#8This is a good article but it's a few years old, and out of date now. I can't see its date with my current adblock settings. It would be great if someone could find it and put it in the title. There are stupendously powerful $1 microcontrollers now, including the RP2040 (dual core cortex m0+ with 264KB ram on the chip), ESP32-S2 (Espressif core with 400k of ram and wifi), and ESP32-C3 with wifi and RISC-V core and ag…
Those are the three micros I use for projects/products, too. A while back I bought a few hundred of the Padauk chips with the intent of doing a small manufacturing run of a side project, but I haven't seen them in stock at the normal places for a while. It looks like the lead time for cheap micros in general is about a year.
Re: $1 Microcontrollers (2017)
#9It's amazing that humanity can produce this sort of hardware under $1. This has implications that are more profound than previous industrial revolutions. In centuries from now, our time will be studied as a remarkably revolutionary one.
I would argue that this kind of price is only doable because people and resources are being exploited for it. Not specifically only for these microcontrollers, but most our consumer products in general.
In a worst case scenario, the resources for this $1 microcontroller were mined by an african child, barely earning anything. These resources are then shipped to China(probably), where people along the way don't earn much either. Except the white collar workers managing it all, of course.
These controllers are then built in a factory, either by robots, or low-earning workers. Then shipped to a warehouse.
For me, the fact that such things can be bought so cheaply is not really an achievement if we look at how broken the supply chains are if we consider the humans who are affected by them. And also the environment which gets destroyed quite a bit.
I am of course talking from a moralist and empathical perspective. What I am trying to say is, that this is only an achievement because we accept or ignore the drastic consequences.
Re: $1 Microcontrollers (2017)
#10It's amazing that humanity can produce this sort of hardware under $1. This has implications that are more profound than previous industrial revolutions. In centuries from now, our time will be studied as a remarkably revolutionary one.
I would argue that this kind of price is only doable because people and resources are being exploited for it. Not specifically only for these microcontrollers, but most our consumer products in general. In a worst case scenario, the resources for this $1 microcontroller were mined by an african child, barely earning anything. These resources are then shipped to China(probably), where people along the way don't earn m…
Also environmental damage that will cost to repair, offloaded onto the government or even future generations