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Exploring different microcontrollers less than $1

jaycarlson.net

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Re: Exploring different microcontrollers less than $1

#121

Post by blhack »

slug wrote: post #49
blhack wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am falling in love with wemos's breakout boards for ESP. For instance, this one: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/WeMos-D1-ESP-Wroom-02-ESP826... This is an ESP8266 breakout/programmer for about ~$3: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/ESP8266-ESP12-ESP-12-WeMos-D... Absolutely incredible stuff. Ordered this one coming soon: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/WEMOS-WiFi-Bluetooth-Battery... And in the realm of awesome brea…

I believe that for the US market you are required to use the 915MHz ISM band LORA modules, the one you pointed to works in the 432MHz band.

I'm not sure about that, but adafruit also sells a 432mhz board in the US without any warnings: https://www.adafruit.com/product/3079

Re: Exploring different microcontrollers less than $1

#122

Post by deeg »

jventura wrote: post #120

Maybe is not the best topic to ask, but does anyone know good sources (websites, books, kits) for playing with and learning a bit more about microcontrollers and electronics? I would prefer structured sources (those that take newbies by hand) than unstructured ones.. I used to play a little bit with the nerdkits ( http://www.nerdkits.com ) and really enjoyed their approach but they seem to have gone out of business a…

adafruit.com and sparkfun.com are two of my go-tos. Pretty strong community support.

Re: Exploring different microcontrollers less than $1

#123

Post by jpablo »

jjcc wrote: post #90
xt00 wrote: post #7

Now if somebody from China can make a list of the cheap micros under 1-2 RMB, now that would be a nice list for super low cost stuff.. that I'd be very interested in...

There's a popular CPU in China meet your requirement: http://stcmcu.com/ but in Chinese

Any website where I can order a few for testing?

Re: Exploring different microcontrollers less than $1

#124

Post by hwh »

StavrosK wrote: post #68
blhack wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am falling in love with wemos's breakout boards for ESP. For instance, this one: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/WeMos-D1-ESP-Wroom-02-ESP826... This is an ESP8266 breakout/programmer for about ~$3: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/ESP8266-ESP12-ESP-12-WeMos-D... Absolutely incredible stuff. Ordered this one coming soon: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/WEMOS-WiFi-Bluetooth-Battery... And in the realm of awesome brea…

Wait, is that last one two ESP32 boards with LoRa and a screen for less than $20? If so, that's amazing, but it's too cheap and I don't see the ESP32.

It (the ESP32) is right in the middle of the bottom view photo. The actual SX1278 is smaller, on the right. On the bottom, you have the SPI flash for the ESP32.

Re: Exploring different microcontrollers less than $1

#125

Post by blhack »

StavrosK wrote: post #68
blhack wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am falling in love with wemos's breakout boards for ESP. For instance, this one: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/WeMos-D1-ESP-Wroom-02-ESP826... This is an ESP8266 breakout/programmer for about ~$3: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/ESP8266-ESP12-ESP-12-WeMos-D... Absolutely incredible stuff. Ordered this one coming soon: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/WEMOS-WiFi-Bluetooth-Battery... And in the realm of awesome brea…

Wait, is that last one two ESP32 boards with LoRa and a screen for less than $20? If so, that's amazing, but it's too cheap and I don't see the ESP32.

Well that is what they're advertising, which is absolutely insane in my opinion. I ordered a few of them[1], so I'll let you know when they get here.

It looks like the ESP32 is on the back. Sparkfun also sells an ESP32 that comes in that package: https://www.sparkfun.com/products/13907

What's really interesting going on right now is that adafruit/sparkfun have become radioshack, and aliexpress has become my go to place to find interesting new stuff.

I will say that whenever I'm doing a commercial project[2], however, I still use the more expensive adafruit/fry's/genuine arduino boards.

[1]: I help run a hackerspace in Phoenix, and I do all sorts of maker workshops all over the world, so having a bunch of weird dev boards and parts and stuff is pretty important to me. If those don't end up working, it was worth the $40 to find out.

[2]: Part of my life is helping create one-off experiential advertising installations. Usually these things have a stack of arduinos in them controlling lights, sensors, motors, etc.

Re: Exploring different microcontrollers less than $1

#126

Post by Hasz »

dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #28

> And even if it were properly executed, I think I reject the underlying goal of this strategy. The whole purpose of using an Arduino UNO form-factor is to support Arduino shields — yet I have never seen an Arduino shield on the desk of a professional engineer or advanced hobbyist. At least, not one plugged into one of these “Uno form-factor” dev boards. I have to chime in. What's the point of using the UNO form fact…

The code. The shields are pretty worthless, but the availability of libraries and example code is excellent.

Instead of working out all the fine details of I2C, I can call a well developed function that takes care of all that for me. Instead of spending days writing a graphics library, I can find an off the shelf GFX library that has more features/is faster/ etc

The ability to move quickly with well documented, prebuilt libraries is invaluable when you want to get something up and running ASAP.

Once you're ready to develop it, then you can go back, strip out everything that's not needed, rewrite things, etc.

That's the beauty of Arduino.

Re: Exploring different microcontrollers less than $1

#127

Post by StavrosK »

hwh wrote: post #124
StavrosK wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, is that last one two ESP32 boards with LoRa and a screen for less than $20? If so, that's amazing, but it's too cheap and I don't see the ESP32.

It (the ESP32) is right in the middle of the bottom view photo. The actual SX1278 is smaller, on the right. On the bottom, you have the SPI flash for the ESP32.

Ah, interesting, I thought the ESP32 had the same layout as the ESP8266 (processor + flash storage) so I got confused. I guess the ESP8266 storage is embedded in the chip. Very nice breakout, I'll have to look around for a 864 MHz one.

Re: Exploring different microcontrollers less than $1

#128

Post by blhack »

lucaspiller wrote: post #14
Yaggo wrote: post #9

Didn't read all the author's criteria, but esp8266 is worth mentioning in the context of cheap microcontrollers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESP8266

Yeah if anyone is just looking to get started tinkering with embedded hardware I'd say this is the way to go. The chips were made popular by NodeMCU which uses Lua, but you can easily run Arduino or write plain C on the same hardware. I've tried a few breakout boards and my favourite is the WEMOS D1 Mini. All you need to supply is a MicroUSB cable. You can get them shipped from China for under $3: https://wiki.wemos.…

>The chips were made popular by NodeMCU which uses Lua, but you can easily run Arduino or write plain C on the same hardware.

I'm pretty sure that its the work done to make these into $3 wifi arduinos that is what made them popular. That's why wemos literally sells one that is shaped like, and has the same header spacing as, an arduino uno.

Re: Exploring different microcontrollers less than $1

#129

Post by dfox »

davandg wrote: post #107
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…

Arduino-compatible layer is useful when you don't want to setup real IDE or your own build system for native toolchain. For ease of development it does not buy you that much over straight C for anything remotely non-trivial. On the other hand many small MCUs can run RTOSes with somewhat POSIX-ish APIs (particularly notable in this space is ESPxx, for which the official toolchain is port of FreeRTOS and probably nobody uses it as bare hardware)

Re: Exploring different microcontrollers less than $1

#130

Post by Crespyl »

avip wrote: post #79
moultano wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[best $1 microcontroller] returns it on top.

It's easy to find something once you know where it is. Omit that magical "1$" and try dig your way to the OP...

This suggests an interesting "golf" game: Given any web page, find the shortest set of keywords that will cause Google to return that page in the first page of results.

Should probably exclude some operations like "inurl" or simply searching the entire page url.

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