can anyone recommend me a microcontroller

What's wrong with a small instruction set? More importantly, PICs (and

8051s) have instruction sets that are an awkward fit with C, but you can get C compilers for them that work reasonably well. The Atmel AVR has an instruction set that is small but is a very good fit with C -- it also has wimpy drive pins and in the past has had a reputation for having poor supply-chain performance, at least in small quantities.

Most anything you can get in an 8-bit microprocessor that has an ADC will also have PWM output, a fair amount of timer resources, and no DAC per se. You'll have to use the PWM output for a DAC, or use external.

I'd look at PIC, AVR, H8, and the many 8051-core micros out there. You may want to find EDN magazine's web site and see if they've got a current microprocessor directory -- that'll give you _lots_ of ideas for places to look.

--
Tim Wescott
Control systems and communications consulting

Not many small ones around with a DAC.... you could use an SPI dac ( 8 pin soic or smaller) then you have a BIG choice.

Hi,

FREESCALE 9s12E... but "big" package (80 pins).

I think your best choice will be a serial (SPI, IIC or 3 wires) external DAC.

Yvan

The R8C/2A has all that, in a 64 pin package ($5-6 at digikey). Might be a bit of overkill, though.

The R8C/2E might do, once it's released - it's a 32 pin part, 16 bit CPU. 12ch 10bit A/D, 2ch 8bit D/A, 8 and 16 bit PWM. 10mA at 20MHz,

23uA at 32KHz, 0.7uA stopped. 8K flash, 512b ram:

Same deal with the R8C/33.

Hmm... so how big do I have to get before I start running into some microcontrollers that include the DAC? Thanks for the EDN tip I'll start checking there, I'm just having a hard time conducting a search for what I need. thanks

That wish list strongly suggests an MSP430 to me. Have a look at

for a brief outline of the range. Not all of the units have DACs so isolate those before deciding which if any would best suit your needs.

You're not quite right that PICs don't support C. As Tim Wescott has already pointed out, it's true that the low end PIC10/12/16s are not well optimised for C but compilers do exist and people who have used them report good results (I've only ever used assembly for those devices). The 'higher' numbered PIC17/18/24 devices are much more suited to C.

--
Andrew Smallshaw
andrews@sdf.lonestar.org

8 bit port & bunch of resistors if you need less then 8 bit accuracy.

MfG JRD

You could also go to a distributor's site, and search for microcontrollers.

For instance:

Select your parameters, such as "Data Converters", package and core, and apply filters.

TI has some small MSP430's with both DAC and ADC (with timers that can do PWM).

program in assembler. with a small instruction set, it's not hard. Look at the data sheets to get a sense of PIC programming.

--
	mac the naïf

The NXP LPC2148 ARM has an ADC and DAC. It's quite cheap and good C compilers for it are available.

Leon

"small"???

PIC16 --> 35 instructions PIC18 --> 83 instructions AVR --> 131 instructions (including 2-cycle multiply)

Best, Jon

One of the smallest models with DAC is the SiLabs C8051F330 and C8051T630 (new OTP, 62c/10K). This has 10 bit adc/dac,

If you need better performance, and 5V IO, their C8051F41x series has 12bit ADC and dual DAC

With all of these, Silabs have low cost USB Tool Sticks.

-jg

MSP430F1611. 12-bit ADC(8 ch) and DAC (2 ch). Good C compilers are available and it's pretty power-efficient. If you need less than 12-bit resolution, the choices expand greatly. You didn't say how much resolution you need on the ADC and DAC.

Mark Borgerson

There's another group of '430 parts (I forget the exact part numbers) with a 16-bit A/D and 12-bit DAC. IIRC, it's in a pretty small package.

--
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  World War III? No
                                  at               thanks!

Alex is 100% right. I started off a couple years ago looking to program a PIC in C. It's a waste of time. First off, there are limited free/cheap compilers, and even the commercial ones look like they were designed for Windows 95. I ended up with a Parallax uC because it was much faster and had affordable programmers/debuggers. Parallax makes a SX/B (aka basic) which is actually compiled/converted line by line into assembly. It's pretty decent.

Many uC applications are timing sensitive, and a high level language like C just gets in the way. Too much abstraction and you don't know what's going on at the hardware level. You even have to get underneath the assembly (and look at machine code) sometimes to get a better idea of what's happening.

Keith

I also agree. My experience is about 10 years old with a PIC16. I had only simple things to program, so I started with C. Then I found that the compilers were far from meeting the C standard. So far that I had to verify the translation of everything in detail. The compiler vendor was co-operative, in that I could call him up and report bugs, and he went to work to remove them. The problem was that they then showed up elsewhere. The work wasn't wasted, though, because I had become thoroughly familiar with the instruction set and could now do sane assembly programming.

BTW, the bugs were not just the absence of recursive functions, etc.

--
 [mail]: Chuck F (cbfalconer at maineline dot net) 
 [page]: 

"panfilero" skrev i meddelandet news: snipped-for-privacy@s37g2000prg.googlegroups.com...

The new XMEGA AVRs have plenty of 2 Megasample 12 bit ADC channels and a few 1 Megasample DACs integrated. Plenty of PWMs and runs up to 32 MIPS (AVR MIPS that is).

Will have very good power consumption and power down currents are in the uA range.

While the chips available now are in a 100 pin package, you can create a design with a 44 pin padring inside, and move to the 44 pin package when it becomes available. The code should be the same, if the promises hold.

No core change over the earlier AVRs, so with the right I/O headers, any AVR compiler should do.

--
Best Regards,
Ulf Samuelsson

TI also has 8052 based micros with A/D and D/A. You did not say how many bits you need. The fact that the PIC ( and 8052) Architecture is a poor fit for C is the compiler writer problem not yours. I have used both and found them to be fine.