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$1 Microcontrollers (2017)

jaycarlson.net

41–50 of 103 posts

Re: $1 Microcontrollers (2017)

#41
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>RP2040 Wow, that's an incredibly capable chip for the price!

How fast is the serial interface over USB? (What you need if you want to connect it to a normal PC)

The RP2040 actually has built in 12Mbps USB 1.1, no serial bridge required. But if you do want to use a serial to USB bridge the max baud rate is 921600.

Re: $1 Microcontrollers (2017)

#42

The Texas Instruments MSP430 is another good one to look at. At one point, dev kits were available for under $10. It's a good choice for low-power applications. Comes with a free IDE.

TBH the rpi pico (rp2040 dev board) is hard to beat for the price of 5$. Dual core ARM cortex-m0+ at 100 something MHz and loads of ram and flash.

Re: $1 Microcontrollers (2017)

#43
Semi-related: Since few months I am digging into tinkering and electronics. It’s really great to learn about modern era solutions which enable cool projects with low entry barrier.

However, I happen to learn about new solutions (new sensors, actors, boards, ICs) more randomly than systematically. I tried to google for databases, blogs or news outlets, but couldn’t find anything suited for my consumerish needs. Going through hundreds of pages for similar products on online shops also didn’t yield any good output. Do you guys know any such source? How do you keep yourself updated on interesting new products on the market?

Re: $1 Microcontrollers (2017)

#44

This is a good article but it's a few years old, and out of date now.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…

>RP2040 Wow, that's an incredibly capable chip for the price!

It has an interesting trade-off: no internal flash. But I've found that I add a SPI-flash chip to the MCU in many designs, so it's a reasonable choice.

NXP has rt1020 (Cortex-M7, no flash), or rt1024, which is same but 4 MB flash in the package- it's connected to the SPI-flash controller of the rt1020 core, so I think it's a multi-die package.

Re: $1 Microcontrollers (2017)

#45
What I want more than $1 microcontrollers is a series of controllers that goes from low price/low performance to higher price/higher performance, but all programmable with the same open-source software stack.

I don't want to read datasheets again whenever I need 100MHz more clock speed, or 1mW less power consumption. Because reading datasheets, at some point, feels like filling out tax forms.

Re: $1 Microcontrollers (2017)

#46
post #45

What I want more than $1 microcontrollers is a series of controllers that goes from low price/low performance to higher price/higher performance, but all programmable with the same open-source software stack. I don't want to read datasheets again whenever I need 100MHz more clock speed, or 1mW less power consumption. Because reading datasheets, at some point, feels like filling out tax forms.

The STM32 line is as close as you will get with this. Its HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) is MIT licensed and is very similar across products. Products in the same family are nearly pin compatible.

Re: $1 Microcontrollers (2017)

#47
post #45

What I want more than $1 microcontrollers is a series of controllers that goes from low price/low performance to higher price/higher performance, but all programmable with the same open-source software stack. I don't want to read datasheets again whenever I need 100MHz more clock speed, or 1mW less power consumption. Because reading datasheets, at some point, feels like filling out tax forms.

The STM32 line is as close as you will get with this. Its HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) is MIT licensed and is very similar across products. Products in the same family are nearly pin compatible.

Yeah, STM32 spans the range between the $1 and the STM32F7 at 200Mhz

Re: $1 Microcontrollers (2017)

#48
post #45

What I want more than $1 microcontrollers is a series of controllers that goes from low price/low performance to higher price/higher performance, but all programmable with the same open-source software stack. I don't want to read datasheets again whenever I need 100MHz more clock speed, or 1mW less power consumption. Because reading datasheets, at some point, feels like filling out tax forms.

I've wanted something similar when shopping at Adafruit. https://www.pcpartpicker.com has some pretty good search tools that I wish more vendors would copy.

Re: $1 Microcontrollers (2017)

#49
post #40

This 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…

The article about the Padauk is interesting. Especially the description of the FPPA feature. Multiple CPU contexts? This sounds suspiciously like SMT to me which would be a total novelty for a micro controller (afaik).

[deleted]

Re: $1 Microcontrollers (2017)

#50
post #40

This 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…

The article about the Padauk is interesting. Especially the description of the FPPA feature. Multiple CPU contexts? This sounds suspiciously like SMT to me which would be a total novelty for a micro controller (afaik).

ESP32 was released August 2016. I’m not even sure it was the first.
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