Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

General purpose MCUs built in to LEDs emulate candle flicker

cpldcpu.wordpress.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 191 posts

Re: General purpose MCUs built in to LEDs emulate candle flicker

#151

Post by kragen »

Karliss wrote: post #148
kragen wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the 6502, 8080, z80, 8085, 8086, 65816, 68000, and 68010 were universally described as microprocessors, not microcontrollers, but did not have mmus built in (and of these only the 68010 could easily have one bolted on, as i understand it) i think typically the thing that distinguished these from microcontrollers like the 8031, 8051, 8748, 8751, pic1650, etc., is that the microcontrollers had program memory built into…

Arguing about hard definitions differentiating microprocessor from microcontrollers based on single feature is pointless. It's a vague product/marketing category for certain usecases. There will be group of features that are more likely included or not included, but for most of them there will likely be exceptions. And the set of available features available MCUs and microprocessors change over the time. As technolog…

mostly i agree; it's mostly a marketing distinction rather than a technical one

actually i think non-micro (multi-integrated-circuit) processors are becoming popular again. the 'microprocessor' moniker wasn't coined to distinguish processors built out of discrete transistors from processors built out of integrated circuits; that was the 'second-generation computer' vs. 'third-generation computer' distinction back in the 01960s. what made a microprocessor 'micro' was that it was a chip instead of a circuit board

Re: General purpose MCUs built in to LEDs emulate candle flicker

#152

Post by howerj »

It would be possible to use the LED itself for bidirectional communications (for example reconfiguring it), see https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2003-35 or "Very Low-Cost Sensing and Communication Using Bidirectional LEDs" by Mitsubishi. You could then reprogram the device.

Re: General purpose MCUs built in to LEDs emulate candle flicker

#153

Post by jacquesm »

kragen wrote: post #137
jacquesm wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're almost at (or are already at) the stage where the packaging of the chip costs more than the computer inside it.

we're two orders of magnitude past that stage. a ryzen 7 is ten billion cmos transistors for a hundred dollars, ten nanodollars per transistor. so how much does a minimal computer cost at ten nanodollars per transistor? the intersil im6100 was a pdp-8 cpu in 4000 cmos transistors, and the 6502 was comparable, but that's with no memory other than the cpu registers. for a useful microcontroller you probably need about…

What a complicated way of saying 'yes' ;)

Re: General purpose MCUs built in to LEDs emulate candle flicker

#154

Post by wffurr »

msla wrote: post #97

So is the program of that chip burned into mask ROM (do people still do that?) or could that thing be taken out and repurposed? The datasheet mentions handy-dandy device programmers that plug into your PC and probably mandate the use of a horrible proprietary development environment, but maybe that's only for special evaluation parts?

According to another article on the authors site, linked from this one, most of these microcontrollers are “write once”: https://cpldcpu.wordpress.com/2019/08/12/the-terrible-3-cent...

Re: General purpose MCUs built in to LEDs emulate candle flicker

#155

Post by kalleboo »

graphe wrote: post #33
kebman wrote: post #23

I really hate these fake LED candles with a passion. Either put an actual candle on the table, or just put a small cosy light that doesn't flicker.

Why? Ive known several people that died from candles including the actions of other people's usage of candles.

Yeah my wife once fell asleep with a candle burning. It lit fire to the decorative candle holder and some kids clothes lying on the table. Luckily the IKEA table was fire-resistent so the fire extinguished itself but I came home to a home full of smoke and my wife asleep in the middle of it and it was the scare of my life.

Also bought smoke alarms for every room of the house after that (the hard-wired fire alarm in the apartment was heat activated only I guess)

Re: General purpose MCUs built in to LEDs emulate candle flicker

#156

Post by kragen »

jacquesm wrote: post #153
kragen wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we're two orders of magnitude past that stage. a ryzen 7 is ten billion cmos transistors for a hundred dollars, ten nanodollars per transistor. so how much does a minimal computer cost at ten nanodollars per transistor? the intersil im6100 was a pdp-8 cpu in 4000 cmos transistors, and the 6502 was comparable, but that's with no memory other than the cpu registers. for a useful microcontroller you probably need about…

What a complicated way of saying 'yes' ;)

i thought it was an interesting enough question to merit deeper analysis; perhaps someone else who thinks so will read it

Re: General purpose MCUs built in to LEDs emulate candle flicker

#157

Post by dragontamer »

HenryMulligan wrote: post #132
dragontamer wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least a decade ago, a major magazine had a disposable chip inside for... I don't remember why. Does anyone remember this?

I remember receiving this video ad for a Chevy pickup truck in a print issue of Popular Mechanics circa 2015 [0]. When disassembled, it consisted of a screen, battery, speaker, and circuit board. What the article doesn't say is that the circuit board had a micro-USB port which when connected to a computer mounted the internal storage as a drive, with the four-or-so videos it played accessible. I actually managed to f…

That's closer to what I remember, but I don't think the advertisement was about a Chevy Pickup.

Apparently the group that did this advertisement was: https://www.americhip.com/ourwork/?product=product-magazine-...

And they have a whole slew of magazine inserts that they've done. I'm convinced now that I saw one of these magazine inserts, but not the one on the Chevy. Thanks for helping me track it down! I'm really close...

EDIT: I found it!! https://www.americhip.com/ourwork/microsoft-wi-fi-hotspot.ht...

It was this advertisement, I remember the cover. Sorry I wasn't very specific earlier, but I didn't realize how many "throwaway computers inside of magazines" that there were. I guess I assumed this was a one-off event with Microsoft's 365 WiFi cloud (now that I remember the chip, lol).

Re: General purpose MCUs built in to LEDs emulate candle flicker

#158

Post by RetroTechie »

mlyle wrote: post #133
makerdiety wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have noted this article for my talk about how CPUs are free. If teeny computers are free, and if I want to re-program them for my own use cases and personal applications, then why do I have to still spend nearly a thousand dollars or two on embedded systems development equipment like microcontroller development boards, JTAGs, ICEs, ROM flashers, UART-based bootloading solutions, and other delicate programming int…

First: don't conflate NRE and tooling with the cost of something. Plastic spoons are close to free, but making a plastic spoon factory would be expensive. Second: you don't need most of that stuff. Dev boards that are a few bucks and debug probes for under $20 are credible and usable; fairly good compilers are free. > But too bad that's not really the standard for old technology and resources laying around the planet…

> Compare to doing all of this ages ago, where you'd have an 8051 with an expensive, crummy compiler and need a lot more tooling to do anything.

That depends... back in the day, I could buy an (UV) EPROM programmer for several hundred $$. Or I could study the datasheets, build my own EPROM programmer for a fraction of that, and write some software. Guess which route I took.

With uC's it wasn't much different, and still is. Vendor supplied programmers / debug probes etc, are just a quick & easy way to get started.

What is different these days, is that a lot of those 'vendor' tools are (more or less) generic tools, applicable to a whole class of devices (eg. JTAG), often come as cheap 3rd party clones, and with free software to use them.

So personally I don't understand parent's "1000s of dollars" complaint. That only applies when using niche products, outfitting a pro-level electronics lab, or plain doing it wrong / uninformed of the wealth of stuff out there.

Re: General purpose MCUs built in to LEDs emulate candle flicker

#159

Post by marssaxman »

jacquesm wrote: post #120
marssaxman wrote: post #17

Seems like a small step up from the ubiquitous WS2812, an LED with an onboard controller handling PWM and one-wire communication. Years ago, before animated LED christmas lights were readily available, I hand-made such a string out of ATtiny85 controllers, soldered onto bicolor red/green LEDs, one controller per light. A little bit of C and an evolving animation algorithm recycled from a previous project yielded a pl…

$.032 in quantity...

Which is that?

Re: General purpose MCUs built in to LEDs emulate candle flicker

#160

Post by joezydeco »

crote wrote: post #90
joezydeco wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't buy the PIC chip theory since that means it's either programmed in-situ which seems imposible, or they're ordered with premasked or preprogrammed ROM which is hellishly expensive.

It could also be programmed during production. Clearly the LED manufacturer has the equipment to do wire bonding, so why not use the occasion to program it too? It'd be a bit comparable to the test and assembly process of the WS2812B, see [0] @ 2:30 or 6:10. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMjhJ9kcaU4

Anything is possible, I suppose, but burning EEPROM is an order of magnitude slower than anything these robots are doing.
Post reply on HN