Help with microcontroller for project and how to program it - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / projects

author: GTheis
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: May 20, 2020, 09:44:40 pm
content: Hello,I want to make electronics a hobby (it is a job already as I'm a PhD student in RF/Antenna design).As the university is not allowing me to go through the labs so I can test my antenna designs, I need to do it from home (without any equipment available for me).I'll start then by doing a simple PCB Christmas tree using a coin battery (not sure if it is the correct name), some LEDs, a uC and a button. The idea is to have N different blinking routines controlled by the button. While the idea is fairly simple its been like 3-4 years since I last worked with uCs.So I have a question about the microcontroller. As I want to have panelized PCBs and so several PCBs to solders (i.e: 30 PCBs) using an arduino to program would be expensive (using the arduino to program the atmega, removing from the socket, and adding to the tree PCB) since it'd be 30x1.5€ only for the uCs. So I thought using a OTP microcontroller would be cheaper but very very hard (i.e: Dave's series on Padauk's 3 cent microcontroller)So I am here asking you on a middle ground between simplicity to program and price for microcontrollers. I wouldn't mind if I had to re-learn C and work a lot on my programming skills but if I can have something programmable through Arduino's IDE or in Python that'd the best case scenario.Thanks in advance,-- Guilherme

author: nuclearcat
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 20, 2020, 09:58:11 pm
content: First - avoid AVR (8-bit), they are just dead-end and need custom programmer, unless you buy chip with preloaded arduno-compatible bootloader (still you need to hook USB-TTL adapter or add USB-Serial chip on your board).You can go to some microcontroller that have USB-DFU, and just add to your PCB micro/mini USB.If USB is overkill, just pick microcontroller with UART bootloader, that means you can program your board with trivial jumper and USB-TTL adapter.

author: chriva
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: May 20, 2020, 10:02:08 pm
content: Would attiny13 or 85 suffice?They're way cheaper and still packs a decent amount of punch for small projects like this.Around 0.3-4€ a pop in 25+ quantity.I strongly advice you use Microchip/AVR studio for these tho. Not much space in them so arducrap will waste a great deal of it for no good reason.These can be programmed by an uno if you want to.I believe even avrdude has support to flash attiny via uno so it would be possible to create som batch script that uploads the program automatically after every build for debugging purposes.

author: Etesla
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: May 22, 2020, 06:22:48 pm
content: If you're not too familiar with microcontrollers, an8 bit PIC microthat you can find tutorials on is probably a good place to start. Their datasheets are pretty straightforwards, and they're cheap enough for your purposes I'm sure. You can get a knockoff pickit 3 programmer that WILL WORK for 20 bucks or less as well on amazon or ebay. Use whatever software your tutorial uses, which will probably be either MPlab X or microC.