Greetings
Title says it all. My company is using PIC10's as local supervisors, but th= ey are a pain in a number of ways that I don't wish to discuss. We would li= ke to know of micros that have UART bootloaders loaded at the factory so th= at the parts can be programmed in system from a serial port on the test com= puter.
Requirements are simple: 8 bit ADC, a few timers for PWM. Cost is "well und= er a dollar in 5000's".
Present candidates are MSP430F2xxx and LPC1110.
Thanks
are a pain in a number of ways that I don't wish to discuss. We would like to know of micros that have UART bootloaders loaded at the factory so that the parts can be programmed in system from a serial port on the test computer.
a dollar in 5000's".
I've used the LPC11xx in several applications and found them to be pretty good. If I were in your position I would rather go PIC->ARM rather than the MSP430 route because the M0 - M4 ARMs span a much wider range of performance.
Michael Kellett
When starting with a new microcontroller architecture, moving to Cortex devices may be more useful to you in the future. But the msp430 chips work fine, have low power, and the serial bootloader works. There is open source serial bootloader software available for it (which is often found alongside the msp430 gcc port).
t they are a pain in a number of ways that I don't wish to discuss. We woul= d like to know of micros that have UART bootloaders loaded at the factory s= o that the parts can be programmed in system from a serial port on the test= computer.
under a dollar in 5000's".
=20
Exactly my opinion as well. Why bother with anything other than the ARM Cor= tex series when it spans price/performance from a low end MSP430 up to mons= ters that could outperform a cheap notebook? And the compilers are superb, the debuggers are cheap. What engineer could = ask for more?
=20
=20
We already use the LPCl114 and the MSP430, and far too many PICs. The test = engineer hates PICs as he has to install the entire development environment= onto the test PC just to program some of them (PIC10's I think). This is a= pain when some of the test racks are in another continent (!). He much pre= fers processors with bootloaders.=20
Your comments on low power are (unintentionally) amusing, as we make indust= rial power supplies, the application we need the small processors for is su= pervising the primary side of a 1hp switchmode PSU, which runs off a DC bus= of 435V. 10W of power is quite unnoticeable :)
a dollar in 5000's".
Serial loaders are common in Asia, and if you are making power supplies, a Wide Supply controller may appeal.
Look at anything small from STC or Nuvoton ?
-jg
I use the R8C/1B for a lot of projects - it's 20 pin (LSSOP), uses a plain TTL serial bootloader (two buttons and a serial port, or one FT232R, is my usual circuitry) all Linux-hosted tools (gcc and bootloader) if needed, two timers, 4 10-bit ADC, runs off 2.7 to 5.5 VDC. It has one PWM in hardware (three timers) so it may be weak on that, and I don't know how cheaply you can get them in big quantities (I only buy a few at a time ;)
I've even designed a tiny interface for on-board programming, for space-limited designs:
More recent 20-pin additions to the R8C family include the /2H/2J and /32 series and have better PWM (search digikey for R8C and 20-pin). The smallest R8C/2J is $1.13 per 5000 even at digikey.
The 32D runs on 1.8V to 5.5V and has three synchronized PWM outputs.
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