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Where to start with microcontrollers?

For me, the choice was simple. I didn't have much cash flow when getting started with microcontrollers, so I let the manufacturers try to impress me. I started working with chips from the vendor that actually honored my request for free samples. I got a couple 16F84 chips from PIC. Those, along with a $20 serial port programmer from eBay, and I was off. I could write my programs using the free PIC tools in Linux, burn it on the chip, and pop it in the circuit to use it.

I've been dealing with PIC chips since then, not finding a need for other microcontrollers, yet. I bought other PIC chips from various vendors when I have need for other PIC features.

I see no problems with using PIC microcontrollers, especially for experimentation. There are plenty of PIC based projects online.

Good Luck with whatever you decide to use,

Jeff "The Frugal Hobbyist"

Reply to
jsalzman
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I second this advice, but really, what you should get depends on what you want to do with it. I just wanted to make some measurements and control some relays, via linux.

Perfect for starting out. I wasn't particularly interested in learning yet another architecture & language, I just wanted to use the hardware. So I loaded SimpleMessageSystem from the archives at arduino.cc, then wrote some shell scripts. Run 'wget http://207.14.167.161/SMS1.tgz' to get the package. Full IO & PWM control on the 12 IO pins. The 6 AD pins produce 10bit accuracy. My scripts scale that to millivolts and format it for import to most spreadsheets.

Reply to
Roland Latour

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