The Amazing $1 Microcontroller

As an embedded design consultant, the diverse collection of projects on my desk need an equally-diverse collection of microcontroller architectures that have the performance, peripheral selection, and power numbers to be the backbone of successful projects. At the same time, we all have our go-to chips – those parts that linger in our toolkit after being picked up in school, through forum posts, or from previous projects.

In 2017, we saw several new MCUs hit the market, as well as general trends continuing in the industry: the migration to open-source, cross-platform development environments and toolchains; new code-generator tools that integrate seamlessly (or not so seamlessly…) into IDEs; and, most notably, the continued invasion of ARM Cortex-M0+ parts into the 8-bit space.

I wanted to take a quick pulse of the industry to see where everything is – and what I’ve been missing while backed into my corner of DigiKey’s web site.

It’s time for a good ol’ microcontroller shoot-out.

An amazingly detailed and well-organised resource.

6 Comments

  1. 2017-11-06 10:46 am
  2. 2017-11-06 1:00 pm
    • 2017-11-09 11:23 am
  3. 2017-11-06 10:42 pm
    • 2017-11-08 2:37 am
  4. 2017-11-08 3:01 pm