Re: recommendation of microcontroller please

On 2007-11-20, johnstokes30 <johnstokes30@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

i am new here. i would like to learn embedded programming on
a very well established microcontoller. I know that PICs are
becoming more popular but can someone tell me of a controller
that is popular in industry for several years (8 or 16 bit)
and also has products available that i can use to learn such
as demo kits. motorola 68XX? Atmel? 8051?

First I'd recommend the TI MSP430:

http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/categories.php?cPath=2_11

They're very easy to program and understand (in C or assembly)
and have a nice set of peripherals. They're especially good
for low-power, battery operated things.

You can get a small devlopment board/system for as little as
$20, and some pretty powerful eval boards for not much more
than that:

http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/categories.php?cPath=2_11

If you want to solder some extra stuff on, the proto boards
towards the bottom of the above page work nicely.

The MSP430 port of GCC works quite well:

http://mspgcc.sourceforge.net/

The tools from Rowley are highly regarded and very reasonably
priced (personal licenses are only £75):

http://www.rowley.co.uk/msp430/

My second recommendation would probably be The AVR Atmega
family:

http://www.atmel.com/products/AVR/

Eval/proto boards seem to be harder to find, but there
are some available:

http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/categories.php?cPath=2_10

Like the MSP430, the gcc port works well (here's a windows
package): http://winavr.sourceforge.net/

Rowley also supports the AVR:

http://www.rowley.co.uk/avr/

A lot of people use IAR tools for both these platforms but
they're way down on my list because of:

1) Price.

2) Dongle and license-server hassles.

3) No Linux support.

If you can stomach those issues, IAR tools are solid and their
support seems good (IIRC, there are crippled and/or
time-limited eval versions of IAR tools available for both
platforms).

Both the AVR and the MSP are popular for both hobby and
commercial use.

IMO, the 8-bit PIC is a very nasty little architecture and is
difficult to work with. It's not a part I recommend to
somebody just learning embedded programming. There are C
compilers for it, but it's not well suited for C-language
projects.

I've heard that some of the newer PIC arcitetures don't suck as
badly, but that isn't saying much.

--
Grant Edwards grante Yow! I'm having an
at EMOTIONAL OUTBURST!! But,
visi.com uh, WHY is there a WAFFLE
in my PAJAMA POCKET??
.

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