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Closed 10 years ago.
What are the advantages of using ATmega32 than other microcontrollers?
Is it better than PIC, ARM, and 8051?
Advantages
Still runs on 5 V, so legacy 5 V stuff interfaces cleaner
Even though it's 5 V capable, newer parts can run to 1.8 V. This wide range is very rare.
Nice instruction set, very good instruction throughput compared to other processors (HCS08, PIC12/16/18).
High quality GCC port (no proprietary crappy compilers!)
"PA" variants have good sleep mode capabilities, in micro-amperes.
Well rounded peripheral set
QTouch capability
Disadvantages
Still 8-bit. An ARM is a 16/32-bit workhorse, and will push a good amount more data around, at much higher clock speeds, than any 8-bit.
Cost. Can be expensive compared to HCS08 or other bargain 8-bit processors.
GCC toolchain has quirks, like the split memory model and limited 16-bit pointers.
Atmel is not the best supplier on the planet (at least they're not Maxim...)
In short, they are a very clean and easy to work with a 8-bit microcontroller.
An 8051 is legacy: the tools are passable, the architecture is bizarre (idata? xdata? non-reentrant functions in most compilers by default?).
PIC before PIC24 is also bizarre (register banking) and poor clock->instruction throughput. There is no first-class open source C compiler either.
PIC32 is competing with ARM7TDMI and ARM Cortex-M3, based on an adapted MIPS core, and has a GCC port (not main-lined).
AVR32 is competing with Cortex-M3, and offers a pretty good value, especially in the low power area.
MSP430 is the king for ultra low-power devices, and has a passable GCC port (if you're not targeting 430X).
HCS08 is very inexpensive, but poor instruction throughput. Peripherals vary quite a bit.
ARM used to be a higher cost entry point, but with the introduction of the Cortex-M3 architecture, the price has been dropping compared to an 8-bit. For example, the LPC13xx series is comparable to a ATmega32 in many ways. Luminary (TI) has quite an impressive peripheral set.
It depends.. Firstly you have to know what you want from the microprocessor.
In general:
PIC:
Old architecture. This means it's either expensive or slow
Targets only low end market (< few Mhz)
There's a lot of code written for it
ARM
Scalable
Fast/cheap
Atmega is somewhere in between
I find the PIC family (before the MIPS version) to have the most painful instruction set of all, which means assembler is the language of choice if you want to conserve space, get performance, have control, etc.
The 8051 is a little less painful, more registers, but still takes a handful of instructions to do anything useful (meaning you cannot compare these to other chips from a MHz perspective). I like AVR in many ways, they embrace the homebrew and developer community, or if not directly there is a much better family of developers out there compared to the competition. I don't like the instruction set, but it is decades ahead of the PIC and 8051. I like the MSP430 instruction set quite a bit, it is one of the best instruction sets for teaching assembler, TI is not as developer friendly though, it can be a struggle. The eZ430 was on the right path but the goodfet is better as you don't have it failing to work every other kernel version.
MSP430 and ARM have the best instructions sets as far as I am concerned which leads to both good assembler and good compiler tools. You can find commercial tools for all of the above and certainly for 8051, MSP430, and ARM free tools (MSP430 and ARM can use GCC, 8051 cannot, look for SDCC). For now mspgcc4.sf.net and CodeSourcery are the place for GCC based tools for MSP430 and ARM. LLVM supports both, I was able to get LLVM 27 to beat the latest GCC in a dhrystone test, but that is one test, LLVM trails behind in performance but is improving.
As far as finding and creating free cross compilers I see LLVM already as the easiest to get and use and going forward it will hopefully only get better. Sadly the MSP430 port for LLVM was a look what I could do in an afternoon PowerPoint presentation and not a serious port.
My answer is that it depends on what you are doing, and I recommend you try all of them. These days the evaluation boards are in the sub US$50 range and some in the sub US$30 range. Even within the ARM family (ST, Atmel, Stellaris, LPC, etc.) there is a wide veriety of features and quirks that you will only find if you try them. Avoid the LPCexpresso, mbed2, and STM32 primers. Avoid LPC in general and avoid Cortex-M3 in general until you have cut your teeth on an ARM7. Look at SparkFun for Olimex and other boards. Although it is probably LPC the ARMmite PRO and Arduino Pro are good choices. The eZ430 is a good MSP430 start, and I don't remember who is making 8051 stuff, Renasys (sp?), 8051s are not all created equal, the register space varies from one to another and you have to prepare for that. I would probably look for an 8051 simulator if you want to play with the 8051.
I see AVT and definitely ARM continuing to dominate, I would like to see the MSP430 be used for things other than just super low power. With ARM, AVR, and MSP430 you can use and get used to GCC tools now and in the future, which has a lot of benefits even if GCC isn't the best compiler in the world, it is by far the best supported compiler. I would avoid proprietary compilers and tools. I would look for devices that have non-proprietary programming interfaces that are field programmable, JTAG is good, but for example the new SWD JTAG on Cortex-M3 is bad. TI MSP was hurt by this but some hacking has resolved this, at least for now. I really don't have much good to say about PIC and won't try. A big thing to look for is glue logic, does the part or family have the SPI or I2C or whatever bus you want to use, do you need an internal pull up or wired or input?
Some chips just don't have that option and you have to add external hardware. Do you need an interrupt, with conditioning? ARM tends to win on this because it is a core used by many so each ARM vendor puts its own I/O out there so you can still live in the ARM world and have many choices, AVR and MSP are going to be very limited by comparison. With ARM the tools are going to be state of the art, ARM is the most used processor right now. AVR and MSP are special project addons, less widely supported and fragile. Although ARM is low power compared to Intel on a SBC or computer platform, it is likely not as low-power as an AVR or MSP. You really need to look at your project and pick the right processor for the job, I wouldn't and don't limit myself to one family. With as cheap as the evaluation boards are, and almost all can use free tools, it is just a matter of putting in a few nights or weekends in to learn each. I suggest learning more than one AVR, and learning more than one microprocessor.
At this end of the spectrum, there are only really two factors that make much difference. First, in smaller quantities, the only thing that matters at all is which architecture suits your development needs best. If you are already familiar with PIC, there's not much point in learning avr, or visa versa. Pick an architecture that you like, then sort through the options on that architecture to see which model is up to your particular needs.
In quantity (say, 20 or more units), you might benefit by choosing just the right platform that precisely matches your devices' needs, to keep costs as low as possible.
In general, Pic and avr platforms are good for simple, single function devices, where as arm is used in cases where you need a full OS stack like QNX or Linux for things like TCP or real time with OS services.
If you want the widest choice of peripherals, performance, price-point, software and tool support, and suppliers it would be hard to beat an ARM Cortex-M3 based part.
But addressing your question directly the whole AVR range has a consistent architecture and common peripheral set from the Tiny to the Mega (not AVR32 however which is entirely different). This is the significant difference with PIC where when moving up the range( PIC10, 12, 16, 18, 24, 32), you get different peripheral designs, different instruction sets, and need to invest in different compilers and debug hardware.
The instruction set for AVR was designed for efficient C code compilation (again unlike PIC).
8051 is an architecture originally introduced by Intel decades ago, but now used as the core for 8 bit devices from a number of vendors. It has some clever tricks such as efficient multitasking context switches via its 8 duplicated register banks, and a block of bit addressable memory, but has a quirky memory architecture and limited address range (like most 8 bit devices). Great for small well targeted devices, but not truly general purpose.
ARM Cortex-M3 essentially replaces ARM7TDMI, and is a cleaner design with well thought out architecture. It requires minimal assembler start-up code and even ISRs and vector tables can be coded in C directly without any weird compiler extensions or assembler entry/exit code. Its bitbanding technique allows all memory and peripherals to be atomically bit addressable, which is useful for fast I/O and safe multithreading. Basically it is designed to allow C or C++ code at the system level without non-standard compiler extensions. It is of course a 32 bit architecture, so does not have the resource or arithmetic limitations of 8 bit devices. Prices for low-end parts compete with higher performance 8 bit devices, and blow most 16 bit devices out of the water (making 16 bit almost obsolete).
One other key thing to remember is that PIC and AVR are from single vendors, while 8051 and ARM are licensed cores. Each licensee adds their own peripheral set, so there is no commonality between vendors on peripherals, so device driver code needs porting when switching vendors, and you need to ensure the part has the peripherals you need. If you design your device layer well, this is seldom much of a problem.
Well, it isn't easy to answer. It mostly depends on what you used before. If you are already AVR user, then it's good to use. On the other hand you can find PICs with similar capabilities, so I'd say it's mostly personal preference. I think that most ARMs are more capable than atmega32 series. If you want good advice, tell us what you plan to use it for.
AVRs have flat memory model and have free development tools and cheap development hardware is available for them.
I don't know enough about 8051 to comment.
Oh and if you're thinking about original atmega32, I'd say it's a bad idea. It's going to be deprecated soon, so you may want to consider newer models from the atmega32 series.
Related
Are there any specific skillsets required with 8-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit processing for embedded developers?
Yes, there are specific skills expected and differences between 8bit and 32bit processors. (Ignoring 16 bit, since there's so few of them available)
8 bit processors and tools are vastly different than the 32bit variants (even excluding Linux based systems).
Processor architecture
Memory availability
Peripheral complexity
An 8051 is a strange beast and plopping your average CS in front of one and asking them to make a product is asking for something that only mostly works. It's multiple memory spaces, lack of stack, constrained register file, and constrained memory really make "modern" computer science difficult.
Even an AVR, which is less of a strange beast, still has constraints that a 32 bit processor just doesn't have, particularly memory
And all of these are very different than writing code on an embedded linux platform.
In general processors and microcontrollers using 32 bit architecture tend to be more complex and used in more complex applications. As such, someone with only 8 bit device experience may not process the skills or experience necessary for more complex projects.
So it is not specifically the bit-width that is the issue, but it is used simply as a shorthand or proxy for complexity of systems. It is a very crude measure in any event since architectures differ widely even withing the bit-width classification; AVR, PIC and x51 for example are very different, as are 68K, ARM and x86. Even within the ARM family a Cortex-M device is very different from an A-class device.
Beware of any job spec that uses such broad skill classifications - something for you to challenge perhaps in the interview.
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Closed 11 years ago.
I am already a software developer, but daily business work is neither challenging not improving my skills.
I have no clue how this embedded things work, what are the setup needs to be done to even run hello world program.
So I am looking for very basic development board, which is support at C language.
not very complicated or high processing. As that would be over killing for a just beginner.
if I am able to understand how to handle a small device. I would learn other upper level board. As it is self paced and self teaching. I don't wanna jump over a complicated board as that happened to me once. I have having LPC 21xx board, well equipped. having good space to create program and run them.
But I was knocked out in the round zero. could not figured out more then plugging into computer and turn it on.
So suggest me simple board it would be great if it support usb as my laptop does not have serial port. if if there is nothing no issue, I hope there will be something usb to serial. :)
Please help. I really wanna learn it.
The arduino is very user friendly but in part because they hid the stuff you are trying to learn. You can still get down to the metal on an arduino though
The winarm guy has tons of example programs to get you started.
Sparkfun is the place to go in the US for most boards. right now the sam7-h64 is on sale, atmel has a util for covering the loading of the board problem. you can get an mbed there, now the maple is there, coridium armmite pro, and a plethera of arduino variations. And the msp430 launchpad. No matter what I recommend picking up one of the msp430 launchpad boards, only $4.30, very nice architecture, the usb cable (that comes with it?) is all you need.
Another TI product is the stellaris line of cortex-m3 based chips/eval boards. The 811 is easy to brick, I would avoid it, comes with everything you need. the boards are dripping with goodies, oled display, buttons, etc.
At some point you are going to need to get your feet wet with openocd. Amontek makes the jtag-tiny which is a very nice arm jtag wiggler. A number of the eval boards have ftdi chips on them which handle usb to serial and usb to jtag, googling will show tons of info on how to use openocd to connect to and load.
Another path is qemu. a stellaris board/chip or few and other chip families are supported, so you can cover the learning to compile/build the program as well as program some peripherals without having to figure out the loading part.
The atmel avr butterfly is still available for $20. Three wires shoved into a serial port connector and you can program the thing. Has things on the board to learn to program, etc.
I recommend not limiting yourself to one processor family (avr, arm, msp430, etc) nor one chip vendor (lpc, atmel, ti, etc). many of these boards can be had for under $50, some under $25 (look at the ez430 additional boards 3 for $10, the launchpad might be able to program them, otherwise the ez430 is $20). (most of the arduino family wants an additional usb to serial plus power, which almost doubles the cost, also be careful to note 5V vs 3.3V boards, so you dont melt anything down, really good idea to get a few of the different ftdi usb to serial breakout boards from sparkfun anyway).
I don't know if you've heard of Arduino... it's a great beginning hardware platform, programmed with USB in C++. Boards are only $30 so it's pretty cheap too.
stm32l-discovery 14$ for stm32(16kb ram + 128kb flash + 4kb eeprom) + stlink2 on board, you just need an usb-cable. Be sure to get l version, not vl, the l- has slower cpu but an lcd and some touch sensitive buttons. I was a normal c developer before, but found a job in an embedded market, where we use the same processor. In a month I never used any assembler and the experience was not much different than programming for pc except for you can't effectively use dynamical allocation. But that doesn't matter, since you control all the memory and timing and all the hardware for that matter. The iar kickstart tools are also great, especially the debugger - it is fast and you can even attach to the running process. The editor in the IAR IDE sucks big time though. It still doesn't support unicode in 2011 and things like "outline" in eclipse. Still the IDE is very nicely integrated with the hardware. You also got stdperiph. library from stm. It is a bit on the bloatware side, but you can mix and match the modules you like or choose to use raw registers if it makes the code more readable or smaller. Anyway, ask away, if you are interested in my experience. I also would advise against avr, becaus from the cost/performance ratio they are much worse than stm. I was porting a lot of avr code in the last month(avr's had some supply problem) and even if the avr had 16 Mhz and the stm32 had only 32, it much faster, much more configurable and has more periferials which are also easier to programm. Cortex-M3 controller are much nearer to the PC you dont have to optimize alot and 32bit wide words for calculation will spare you much pain. M3 are more comfortable to program with the things like bit banding and configurable interrupt priorities.
I've experience in doing desktop and web programming for a few years. I would like to move onto doing some embed system programming. After asking the initial question, I wonder which hardware / software IDE should I start on...
Arduino + Arduino IDE?
Atmel AVR + AVR Studio 4?
Freescale HCS12 or Coldfire + CodeWarrior?
Microchip PIC+ MPLAB?
ARM Cortex-M3 + ARM RealView / WinARM
Or... doesn't matter?
Which development platform is the easiest to learn and program in (take in consideration of IDE usability)?
Which one is the easiest to debug if something goes wrong?
My goal is to learn about "how IO ports work, memory limitations/requirements incl. possibly paging, interrupt service routines." Is it better to learn one that I'll use later on, or the high level concept should carry over to most micro-controllers?
Thanks!
update: how is this dev kit for a start? Comment? suggestion?
Personally, I'd recommend an ARM Cortex-M3 based microcontroller. The higher-power ARM cores are extremely popular, and these low-power versions could very well take off in a space that is still littered with proprietary 8/16-bit cores. Here is a recent article on the subject: The ARM Cortex-M3 and the convergence of the MCU market.
The Arduino is very popular for hobbyist. Atmel's peripheral library is fairly common across processor types. So, it would smooth a later transition from an AVR to an ARM.
I don't mean to claim that an ARM is better than an AVR or any other core. Choosing an MCU for a commercial product usually comes down to peripherals and price, followed by existing code base and development tools. Besides, microcontrollers are general much much simpler than a desktop PC. So, it's really not that hard to move form one to another after you get the hang of it.
Also, look into FreeRTOS if you are interested in real-time operating system (RTOS) development. It's open source and contains a nice walk through of what an RTOS is and how they have implemented one. In fact, their walk-through example even targets an AVR.
Development tools for embedded systems can be very expensive. However, there are often open source alternatives for the more open cores like ARM and AVR. For example, see the WinARM and WinAVR projects.
Those tool-chains are based on GCC and are thus also available (and easier to use IMHO) on non-Windows platforms. If you are familiar with using GCC, then you know that there are an abundance of "IDE's" to suit your taste from EMACS and vi (my favorite) to Eclipse.
The commercial offerings can save you a lot of headaches getting setup. However, the choice of one will very much depend on your target hardware and budget. Also, Some hardware support direct USB debugging while others may require a pricey JTAG adapter.
Other Links:
Selection Guide of Low Cost Tools for Cortex-M3
Low-Cost Cortex-M3 Boards:
BlueBoard-LPC1768-H ($32.78)
ET-STM32 Stamp Module ($24.90)
New Arduino to utilize an ARM Cortex-M3 instead of an AVR microcontroller.
Given that you already have programming experience, you might want to consider getting an Arduino and wiping out the firmware to do your own stuff with AVR Studio + WinAVR. The Arduino gives you a good starting point in understanding the electronics side of it. Taking out the Arduino bootloader would give you better access to the Atmel's innards.
To get at the goals you're setting out, I would also recommend exploring desktop computers more deeply through x86 programming. You might build an x86 operating system kernel, for instance.
ARM is the most widely used embedded architecture and covers an enormous range of devices from multiple vendors and a wide range of costs. That said there are significant differences between ARM7, 9, 11, and Cortex devices - especially Cortex. However if getting into embedded systems professionally is your aim, ARM experience will serve you well.
8 bit architectures are generally easier to use, but often very limited in both memory capacity and core speeds. Also because they are simple to use, 8-bit skills are relatively easy to acquire, so it is a less attractive skill for a potential employer because it is easy to fulfil internally or with less experienced (and therefore less expensive) staff.
However if this is a hobby rather than a career, the low cost of parts, boards, and tools, and ease of use may make 8 bit attractive. I would suggest AVR simply because it is supported by the free avr-gcc toolchain. Some 8 bit targets are supported by SDCC, another open source C compiler. I believe Zilog make their Z8 compiler available for free, but you may need to pay for the debug hardware (although this is relatively inexpensive). Many commercial tool vendors provide code-size-limited versions of their tools for evaluation and non-commercial use, but beware most debuggers require specialist hardware which may be expensive, although in some cases you can build it yourself if you only need basic functionality and low speeds.
Whatever you do do take a look at www.embedded.com. If you choose ARM, I have used WinARM successfully on commercial projects, although it is not built-for-comfort! A good list of ARM resources is available here. For AVR definitely check out www.avrfreaks.net
I would only recommend Microchip PIC parts (at least the low-end ones) for highly cost sensitive projects where the peripheral mix is a good fit to the application; not for learning embedded systems. PIC is more of a branding than an architecture, the various ranges PIC12, 16, 18, 24, and PIC32 are very different from each other, so learning on one does not necessarily stand you in good stead for using another - often you even need to purchase new tools! That said, the dsPIC which is based on the PIC24 architecture may be a good choice if you wanted to get some simple DSP experience at the same time.
In all cases check out compiler availability (especially if C++ support is a requirement) and cost, and debugger hardware requirements, since often these will be the most expensive parts of your dev-kit, the boards and parts are often the least expensive part.
This is kind of a hard question to answer as your ideal answer very much depends on what it is your interested in learning.
If your goal is just to dive a little deeper into the inner workings of computing systems i would almost recommend you forgo the embedded route and pick up a book on writing a linux kernel module. Write something simple that reads a temperature sensor off the SMbus or something like that.
If your looking at getting into high level (phones, etc) embedded application development, download the Android SDK, you can code in java under eclipse and even has a nice emulator.
If your looking at getting into the "real" microcontroller space and really taking a look at low level system programming, i would recommend you start on a very simple architecture such as an AVR or PIC, something without an MMU.
Diving into the middle ground, for example an ARM with MMU and some sort of OS be it linux or otherwise is going to be a bit of a shock as without a background is both system programming and hardware interfacing i think the transition will be very rough if you plan to do much other than write very simple apps, counting button presses or similar.
Texas Instruments has released a very interesting development kit at a very low price: The eZ430-Chronos Development Tool contains an MSP430 with display and various sensors in a sports watch, including a usb debug programmer and a usb radio access point for 50$
There is also a wiki containing lots and lots of information.
I have already created a stackexchange proposal for the eZ430-Chronos Kit.
No it doesn't matter if you want to learn how to program an embedded device. But you need to know the flow of where to start and where to go next. Cause there are many micro-controllers out there and you don't know which one to choose. So better have a road-map before starting.
In my view you should start with - Any AVR board (atmega 328P- arduino boards or AVR boards)
then you should go to ARM micro-controller - first do ARM CORTEX TDMI
then ARM cortex M3 board.Thus this will give you an overall view after which you can choose any board depending on what kind of project you are working and what are your requirements.
Whatever you do, make sure you get a good development environment. I am not a fan of Microchip's development tools even though I like their microcontrollers (I have been burned too many times by MPLAB + ICD, too much hassle and dysfunction). TI's 2800 series DSPs are pretty good and have an Eclipse-based C++ development environment which you can get into for < US$100 (get one of the "controlCARD"-based experimenter's kits like the one for the 28335) -- the debugger communications link is really solid; the IDE is good although I do occasionally crash it.
Somewhere out there are ICs and boards that are better; I'm not that familiar with the embedded microcontroller landscape, but I don't have much patience for poor IDEs with yet another software tool chain that I have to figure out how to get around all the bugs.
Some recommend the ARM. I'd recommend it, not as a first platform to learn, but as a second platform. ARM is a bit complex as a platform to learn the low-level details of embedded, because its start-up code and initialisation requirements are more complicated than many other micros. But ARM is a big player in the embedded market, so well worth learning. So I'd recommend it as a second platform to learn.
The Atmel AVR would be good for learning many embedded essentials, for 3 main reasons:
Architecture is reasonably straight-forward
Good development kits available, with tutorials
Fan forum with many resources
Other micros with development kits could also be good—such as MSP430—although they may not have such a fan forum. Using a development kit is a good way to go, since they are geared towards quickly getting up-and-running with the micro, and foster effective learning. They are likely to have tutorials oriented towards quickly getting started.
Well, I suppose the development kits and their tutorials are likely to gloss over such things as bootloaders and start-up code, in favour of getting your code to blink the LED as soon as possible. But that could be a good way to get started, and you can explore the chain of events from "power-on" to "code running" at your pace.
I'm no fan of the PICs, at least the PIC16s, due to their architecture. It's not very C-friendly. And memory banks are painful.
It does matter, you need to gradually acquire experience starting with simpler systems. Note that by simpler I dont mean less powerful, I mean ease of use, ease of setup etc. In that vein I would recommend the following (I have no vested interest in a any of the products, I just found them the best):
I've started using one of these (MBED developer board). The big selling points for me were that I could code in C or C++, straightforward connection vis USB and a slick on-line development environment (no local tool installation required at all!).
http://mbed.org/
Five minutes afer opening box I had a sample blinky program (the 'hello world' of the emedded world) running the following:
#include "mbed.h"
DigitalOut myled(LED1);
int main()
{
while(1)
{
myled = 1;
wait(0.2);
myled = 0;
wait(0.2);
}
}
That's it! Above is the complete program!
It's based on ARM Cortex M3, fast and plenty of memory for embedded projects (100mhz, 256k flash & 32k ram). The online dev tools have a very good library and plenty of examples and theres a very active forum. Plenty of help on connecting devices to MBED etc
Even though I have plenty of experience with embedded systems (ARM 7/9, Renases M8/16/32, Coldfire, Zilog, PIC etc) I still found this a refreshingly easy system to get to grips with while having serious capability.
After initially playing with it on a basic breadboard I bought a base board from these guys: http://www.embeddedartists.com/products/lpcxpresso/xpr_base.php?PHPSESSID=lj20urpsh9isa0c8ddcfmmn207. This has a pile of I/O devices (including a miniture OLED and a 3axis accelerometer). From the same site I also bought one of the LCPExpresso processor boards which is cheap, less power/memory than the MBED but perfect for smaller jobs (still hammers the crap out of PIC/Atmega processors). The base board supports both the LCPExpresso and the MBED. Purchasing the LCPExpress processor board also got me me an attached JTAG debugger and an offline dev envoronment (Code Red's GCC/Eclipse based dev kit). This is much more complex than the online MBED dev environment but is a logical progression after you've gained expeience with the MBED.
With reference to my original point noite that the MBED controller is much more capable than the the LPCExpresso controller BUT is much simpler to use and learn with.
I use microchips PIC's, its what I started on, I mainly got going on it due to the 123 microcontroller projects for the evil genius book. I took a Microprocessors class at school for my degree and learned a bit about interrupts and timing and things, this helped a ton with my microcontrollers. I suppose some of the other programmers etc may be better/easier, but for $36 for the PicKit1, I'm too cheap to go buy another one...and frankly without using them I don't know if they are easier/better, I like mine and recommend it every chance I get, and it took me forever to really actually look at it, but I was able to program another chip off board with ICSP finally. I don't know what other programmers do it, but for me that's the nicest thing 5 wire interface and you're programmed. Can't beat that with a stick...
I've only used one of those.
The Freescale is a fine chip. I've used HC-something chips for years for little projects. The only caveat is that I wouldn't touch CodeWarrier embedded with a 10 foot pole. You can find little free C compilers and assemblers (I don't remember the name of the last one I used) that do the job just fine. Codewarrior was big and confusing and regardless of how much I knew about the chip architecture and C programming always seemed to only make things harder. If you've used Codewarrior on the Mac back in the old days and think CW is pretty neat, well, it's not at all like that. CW embedded looks vaguely similar, but it works very differently, and not very well.
A command-line compiler is generally fine. Professionals who can shell out the big bucks get expensive development environments, and I'm sure they make things better, but without that it's still far better than writing assembly code for a desktop PC in 1990, and somehow we managed to do that just fine. :-)
You might consider a RoBoard. Now, this board may not be what you are looking for in terms of a microcontroller, but it does have the advantage of being able to run Windows or DOS and thus you could use the Microsoft .NET or even C/C++ development tools to fiddle around with things like servos or sensors or even, what the heck, build a robot! It's actually kinda fun.
There's also the Axon II, which has the ATmega640 processor.
Either way, both boards should help you achieve your goal.
Sorry for the robotics focus, just something I'm interested in and thought it may help you too.
I use PICs, but would consider Arduino if I chose today. But from your goals:
how IO ports work
memory limitations/requirements
interrupt service routines
I wonder if you best bet is just to hack in the Linux kernel?
BBC Micro Bit
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_Bit
This cheap little board (~20 pounds) was crated by ARM Holdings as an educational device, and 1M units were given out for free to UK students.
It contains an ARM Cortex-M0, the smallest ARM core of all.
I recommend it as a first micro-controller board due to its wide availability, low cost, simplicity, and the fact that it introduces you to the ARM architecture, which has many more advanced boards also available for more serious applications.
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Closed 10 years ago.
Which family should I start to learn? (Never did any programming on microcontroller)
Today AVR and PIC are probably the most common microcontrollers among hobbyists. Both have a very wide range of device variants and both can be used to achieve similar results.
For a beginner I would suggest AVR due to various reasons:
AVR family (tiny, mega) is coherent and easy to understand. The architecture is powerful and modern, and is especially suitable for C compilers. AVRs can of course be programmed in assembly too.
Due to its C-friendly architecture, there are quality C compilers available, both commercial and free. The ubiquitous GCC is ported to AVR and called avr-gcc.
For getting started all you really need is a handful of basic components, the AVR chip itself and a breadboard. Even the programming cable between PC and AVR can be built essentially for free (a so called wiggler). However, several commercial development kits are available, most notably Atmel's own STK500. A commercial development kit is more expensive way for getting started, but doesn't require practically any prior knowledge about electronics. Some development kits contain for example LCD displays so it's easy to get interesting stuff done.
It has a rich hobbyist community.
PIC is notorious for its peculiar architecture. Many love PIC for this, some hate it. AVR is more straightforward and doesn't seem to cause as much extreme and polar opinions.
Both AVR and PIC are used in many serious commercial applications. However, they are not the only options of course. My personal favorite microcontroller for both hobby and commercial work is Silicon Laboratories' C8051 family, most notably C8051F530. There is an excellent free C compiler and assembler for the C8051 family called SDCC.
Summary: There are lots of options, but please don't let that overwhelm you. Just pick one and start learning with it. Microcontrollers are, really, surprisingly easy to master once you just decide to get going!
My boss picked up the basics using AVR within a week without prior experience.
I would suggest AVR. It has far surpassed PIC as the microcontroller platform of choice for general hobbyist projects. Most notably, consider the Arduino (and other *duino) platform, which provides a high end AVR in an easy to interface and popular form factor.
I very much prefer the AVR over PIC, whose architecture I find a bit messy. This may be just me, and it won't trouble you if you can write in a high level language, most likely (some dialect of) C.
Since you're new to microcontrollers I presume performance will not be the issue, so instead I would look for availability of development tools: prototyping boards, IDE and simulation/debugging tools. Personally I liked AVR Studio (Atmel's free development environment) a lot.
Jason mentions the TI's MSP430, which is an excellent controller indeed, especially if you're in very low power applications. But I wouldn't recommend it for a newbie, since configuration is a bit cumbersome. (I recall that the description of the oscillator covered 20+ pages in the user manual.)
Some people commented on the strange (and C unfriendly) architecture of the PIC micro. This is true of the smaller PICs, but the 16 bit chips (PIC24F, dsPIC30, etc) have very clear architectures that work very well with C.
The PIC24F line has the ability to assign pins to functions (timers, A/D, serial I/O) on the fly, making it a bit easier to design with. The MPLAB environment for debugging and development is quite nice.
I've done some PIC programming - mostly because I liked the idea the chip were only a dollar or two. However, for a beginner, making a decision solely on price is premature optimization.
Programming in assembler is an experience. You basically have to learn about 100 concepts before you can blink an LED. (Watchdog timer, reset pins, 8-bit counters/overflows, delay loops, hex, binary, bit-masking, interrupts, interrupt service requests, IO ports, etc.) It's all very educational - and a great feeling to get so close to the machine - but being able to code something in C will hide some of this complexity so you can focus on results. For this reason I would say go with the AVR. (And I believe the prices are now closer to PICs.)
Also: If you're interested in getting things done (and don't mind spending ~$30) check out the arduino. A guy selling them at my local electronics shop was saying he's selling tons of them to art students. (It uses the IDE from the Processing project, and compiles code with avr-gcc.)
Update: Fixed comment that Arduino runs interpreted code. Also updated the approx Arduino price.
I don't understand what the big deal with arduino is, it will ruin your chance of ever understanding what is actually happening. I program with AVR's and PIC's regularly, basically there is not much difference, I can't see what the big fuss is all about.
However for a beginner stay away from arduino, it may be simple, but thats the trap, it gives you no concept of hardware architecture, and no idea what is happening behind the scenes, the stuff beginners need to learn to be an effective programmer.
When I was a beginner I started out with an ATmega32 a $20 USBasp programmer, AVR Studio (Free) and AVRDude (Comes with WinAVR) and followed the intro tutorials in AVR Freaks.
That is all you need, Done!!!
P.S. If you want to really learn how to program micros and have the time learn the assembler for your micro and you will be 20 times the C programmer than someone who started out using arduino.
My vote goes to PIC for the extreme variety of devices availables. But I must say that when I started to use PICs, they was almost nothing else. Maybe now things are changed.
I vote for TI's MSP430 series. I've used PICs extensively (also Atmel chips a little) and by far the most important thing to me is a good debugging IDE. TI has done a pretty good job on this, and their C++ compiler works really well. You can get going with an eval board for less than $100 including an IDE + USB-debugger. The PICs have better & more diverse hardware peripherals, but MPLAB is a piece of crap and the only C++ IDE for PICs is one by IAR which is rather expensive. (more than $2K)
I/we chose PIC mostly because there is more peripheral hardware for the same price. And more importantly, you can't even find comparable AVRs. I did choose one of the legacy free versions though (started with PIC18, migrated to dspic33)
The IDE is free, the (C) compiler is free in the student version (that disables optimization after the first month). Entry level programmers are fairly cheap too. If you have heaps of interrupts, counters and timers, there is a chance you won't need optimization at all. A programmer straight from Microchip is $30.
Note that the above remarks about AVR catering more to HLL development are slightly outdated unless you really go for the legacy architectures like PIC12 and 16.
One typically programs the more modern PIC18 (8-bit) and the 16-bit architectures (24F,30F and dspic33 which are based on the same principal core) in C. The 16-bitters even use GCC. There are also MIPS based 32-bitters now, but they rival more with ARM in the audio/video processing scene. Strangely enough, the modern ones are often cheaper than the old ones. Probably they are produced on in a more modern process that has higher yields.
Another note: meanwhile Microchip/PIC bought Atmel/AVR, but I assume that for the first few years that won't affect the productlines much.
I'm really looking forward to the 60MIPs ethernet enabled 16-bitter that is going to be released this summer (afaik streetprice just above EUR 10)
If you just want to know what is MCU programming, start from Arduino is a good idea. It's cheap, with a novice-friendly IDE (based on processing programming language, which has a similar syntax with C).
But this did not answer your quesiton, beacuse altough Arduino is based on AVR, you cannot feel there is an AVR MCU behind that modern IDE. :)
I had much more success with PIC while I was just getting started. I tried to get a simple starter kit from Arduino and just couldn't get a good basic kit without spending more than $100-200 nickel and diming the setup together. Got a great little starter kit from PIC for about $40 and it has everything: IDE, programmer, starter board with built in circuitry for demos and tutorials. One purchase. Also, the PIC environment was very easy to get set up and working. I was playing with it within an hour.
My first experience with microcontrollers was with an OOPic-R. It allowed me to make simple robotic experiments without worrying too much about the code. The object oriented programming flow makes everything work fast and is easy to program.
Recently, I tried another variety of PIC's, the dirt cheap PICAXE. The included programming interface is a breeze to work with. Also, to physically interface the PICAXE, you only need an RS-232 port to program it and two pins on the chip (no need to do level shifting). I've embedded the PICAXE in very small containers (SMD and DIP chips available) and it has worked quite well.
I have no experience with programming microcontrollers in assembly. If you want to try that, the AVR might be more suitable because of it's bigger user community.
As far as I know, the cheapest way to program an AVR using ATMEL's tools is the ATMEL AVR ISP mkII for 35$. You can find third-party programmers for 10-15$.
I would make my choice based on availability of a C cross-compiler. In the past, that would make AVR the choice. I'm not sure what the status is now.
I've programmed a PIC in assembler, and it was not much fun. C is much nicer in many ways.
http://www.arduino.cc/
HTH
On of the best features of AVR is the community in the forums at www.avrfreaks.net. You get a bunch of experienced electronics engineers hanging out, willing to help newbies to get going.
I would say that i fount the 8051 microcontroller the most easiest and Atmel has come up with microcontrollers with so many inbuilt functions .... but still people are more preferably using the AVR's... my hand would go up with the 8051 family ( if found comfortable ) else the AVR's ...
I love AVR. its easy to program and resources available. there are few community like arduino works with it.
Some more dicussion about the superiority of AVR, on the other Stack Overflow:
http://embeddedgurus.com/stack-overflow/2009/04/pic-stack-overflow/
The popularity of 8 bit PICs baffles me. It’s architecture is awful –
the limited call stack is just the first dreadful thing. Throw in the
need for paging and banking together with the single interrupt vector
and you have a nightmare of a programming model. It would be one thing
if this was the norm for 8 bit devices – but it isn’t. The AVR
architecture blows the PIC away, while the HC05 / HC08 are also
streets ahead of the PIC. Given the choice I think I’d even take an
8051 over the PIC. I don’t see any cost advantages, packaging
advantages (Atmel has just released a SOT23-6 AVR which is essentially
instruction set compatible with their largest devices) or peripheral
set advantages. In short, I don’t get it! Incidentally, this isn’t an
indictment of Microchip – they are a great company and I really like a
lot of their other products, their web site, tech support and so on
(perhaps this is why the PIC is so widely used?)
I started on a Motorola M68HC11, it was simple enough. I think you'll get about the same experience with any 8Bit controllers.
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Closed 10 years ago.
I'm looking to learn about embedded programming (in C mainly, but I hope to brush up on my ASM as well) and I was wondering what the best platform would be. I have some experience in using Atmel AVR's and programming them with the stk500 and found that to be relatively easy. I especially like AVR Studio and the debugger that lets you view that state of registers.
However, If I was to take the time to learn, I would rather learn about something that is prevalent in industry. I am thinking ARM, that is unless someone has a better suggestion.
I would also be looking for some reference material, I have found the books section on the ARM website and if one is a technically better book than another I would appreciate a heads up.
The last thing I would be looking for is a prototyping/programming board like the STK500 that has some buttons and so forth.
Thanks =]
"embedded programming" is a very broad term. AVR is pretty well in that category, but it's a step below ARM, in that it's both simpler to use, as well as less powerful.
If you just want to play around with ARM, buy a Nintendo DS or a Gameboy Advance. These are very cheap compared to the hardware inside (wonders of mass production), and they both have free development toolchains based off of gcc which can compile to them.
If you want to play around with embedded linux, BeagleBoard is looking to be a good option, only $150 and it has a ton of features.
Personally I think AVR is best for the smaller-sized 8-bit platforms, and ARM is best for the larger, more powerful 32-bit based platforms. Like many AVR fans, I don't like PIC. It just seems worse in pretty much every way. Also avoid anything that requires you to write any type of BASIC.
If you just want to play around with it, I'd suggest the Arduino platform (http://www.arduino.cc). It's based on the ATmega168 or ATmega8, depending on the version. It uses a C-like language and has its own IDE.
Myself I've worked in embedded programming for 9 years now and have experience on TI MSP430, Atmel AVR (a couple of flavours) and will be using an ARM soon.
My suggestion is to pickup something that has some extra features in the processor like ethernet controller and CAN controller, even get two or three if you can. Embedded devices are nice to work with, but once they can talk to other similar devices via CAN or get onto a network, they can become much more fun to play with.
ADI's Blackfin is another option since it's quite a straight forward architecture to program, yet can also do some fairly hefty DSP stuff should you choose to go down that route. It helps that the assembly language is quite sane too.
The Blackfin STAMP boards are an inexpensive (~$100 last I checked) way in, and they support the free GCC tools and uClinux.
Whatever architecture you choose I'd definitely recommend first downloading the toolchain\SDK and looking through the sample projects and tutorials - generally having a bit of a play about. You can often get quite acquainted with the architecture through simulation without even touching any hardware.
ARM has the nicest instruction set of the widely used embedded platforms, leaving you free to pick up the general principles of writing software for embedded platforms without getting bogged down in weird details like non-orthogonal registers or branch delay slots. There are plenty of emulators - ARM's own, while not free, is cycle-accurate; and a huge variety of programmable ARM-based hardware is cheap and easy to come by as well.
The TI MSP430 is a great platform for learning how to program microcontrollers. TI has a variety of FREE Tools and some cheap evaluation boards (starting at $20). Plus, it's a low-power, modern microcontroller.
A nice choice would be PIC18 by Microchip
It has quite alot of material, documentation, tutorials and projects on the internet
Free IDE and compiler.
you can pull your own flash writer in a few minutes.
(Although for a debugger to work you'll need to work harder)
If you're a student (or has a student email address) Microchip will send you free sample chips. So basically you can have a full development environment for close to nothing.
PICs are quite prevalent in the industry. Specifically as controllers for robots for some reason although they can do so much more.
Arduino seems to be the platform of choice these days for beginners although there are lots of others. I like the Olimex boards personally but they are not really for beginners.
Microchip's PIC range of CPUs are also excellent for beginners, especially if you want to program in assembler.
BTW, Assembler is not used as much as it used to. The general rule with embedded is if you've got 4k of memory or more, use C. You get portability and you can develop code faster.
I suppose it depends on your skill level and what you want to do with the chip. I usually choose which embedded chip to use by the available peripherals. If you want a USB port, find one with USB built in, if you want analogue-to-digital, find one with an ADC etc. If you've got a simple application, use an 8-bit but if you need serious number crunching, go 32 bits.
I'd like to suggest the beagleboard from TI. It has a Omap3 on it. That's a Cortex-A8 ARM11 CPU, a C64x+ DSP and a video accelerator as well.
The board does not need an expensive jtag device. A serial cable an an SD-Card is all you need to get started. Board costs only $150 and there is a very active community.
www.beagleboard.org
Your question sort of has been answered in this question.
To add to that, the embedded processor industry is very segmented, it doesn't have a major player like Intel/x86 is for the "desktop" processor industry. The ARM processor does have a large share, so does MIPS I believe, and there are many smaller more specific microcontroller like chips available (like the MSP430 etc from TI).
As for documentation, I do embedded development for a day job, and the documentation we have access to (as software developers) is rather sparse. Your best bet is to use the documentation available on the processor manufacturers site.
Take a look at Processing and the associated Arduino and Wiring boards.
If you just want to have fun, then try the Parallax Propeller chip. The HYDRA game platform looks like a blast. There's a $100 C compiler for it now.
I started on BASIC stamps, moved up through SX chips and PICs into 8051s, then 68332s, various DSPs, FPGA soft processors, etc.
8051s are more useful in the real world... the things won't go away. There's TONS of derivatives and crazy stuff for them. (Just stay away from the DS80C400) The energy industry is absolutely full of them.
Start with something tiny. If you have external RAM and plenty of registers... what's the difference between that and a SBC?
Many moons ago I've worked with 8-bitters like 68HC05 and Z80, later AVR and MSP430 (16-bit). However most recent projects were on ARM7. Several manufacturers offer ARM controllers, in all colors and sizes (well, not really color).
ARM(7) is replacing 8-bit architecture: it's more performant (32-bit RISC at faster instruction cycles than most 8-bitters), has more memory and is available with several IO-configurations.
I worked with NXP LPC2000 controllers, which are also inexpensive (< 1 USD for a 32-bitter!).
If you're in Europe http://www.olimex.com/dev/index.html has some nice low-cost development boards. Works in the rest of the world too :-)
For a fun project to test, have a look at xgamestation
But for a more industrial used one chip solution programming, look at PIC
For my Computer Architecture course I had to work with both a PIC and an AVR; in my opinion the PIC was easier to work with, but that's maybe because that's what we worked with the most and we had the most time to get used to. We used the AVR maybe only a couple of times so I couldn't get the hang of it perfectly but it also was nothing overly complicated, or at least not more frustrating than the other.
I think you can also order microprocessor samples from Microchip's website so you could also get started with that?
Second that:
Arduino platform http://www.arduino.cc
HTH
For learning, you can't go past the AVR. The chips are cheap and they'll run with zero external components - they also supply enough current to drive an LED straight from the port.
You can start with a cheap programmer such as lady-ada's USBTinyISP (USD$22 for a kit) which can power your board with 5V from the USB port. Get the free tools WinAVR (GCC based) and AVRStudio and get a small project working in no time.
Yes the AVRs have limitations - but developing software for microcontrollers is largely about managing resources and coping with those problems. It's unlikely that you'll experience problems such as running out of stack space, RAM or ROM when you're making hobbist projects for powerful ARM platforms.
That said, ARM is also a great platform which is widely used in the industry, however, for learning I highly recommend AVRs.
I would suggest Microchip's PIC18F series. I just started developing for them with the RealICE in-circuit emulator, but the pickit2 is a decent debugger for the price. You could say this for the AVR's also, but there is a large following for the device all over the web. I was able to have a - buggy, yet functional - embedded USB device running within days due to all the PIC related chatter.
The only thing I don't like about the PICs is that a lot of the sample code is VERY entwined into the demo boards. That can make it hard to tear out sections that you need and still have an application that will build and run for your application.
Texas Instruments has released a very interesting development kit at a very low price: The eZ430-Chronos Development Tool contains an MSP430 with display and various sensors in a sports watch, including a usb debug programmer and a usb radio access point for 50$
There is also a wiki containing lots and lots of information.
I have already created a stackexchange proposal for the eZ430-Chronos Kit.
You should try and learn from developpers kits provided by Embedded Artists. After you get the kit, check their instructional videos and videos provided by NXP, which are not as detailed as they could be, but they cover a lot of things. Problems with learning ARM as your first architecture and try to do something practicall are:
You need to buy dev. kit.
You need a good book to learn ARM assembly, because sooner or later you will come across ARM startup code, which is quite a deal for a beginner. The book i mentioned allso covers some C programming.
Combine book mentioned above with a user guide for your speciffic processor like this one. Make sure you get this as studying this in combination with above book is the only way to learn your ARM proc. in detail.
If you want to make a transfer from ARM assembly to C programming you will need to read this book, which covers a different ARM processor but is easier for C beginner. The down side is that it doesn't explain any ARM assembly, but this is why you need the first book.
There is no easy way.
mikroElektronika has nice ARM boards and C, Pascal and Basic compilers that might suite your demands.