[time-nuts] Follow-up question re: microcontroller families

[Bob Camp]

Hi

On May 25, 2013, at 11:26 PM, Herbert Poetzl <herbert at 13thfloor.at> wrote:

> On Sat, May 25, 2013 at 09:26:02PM -0400, Bob Camp wrote:
>> Hi
> 
>> I realize this is a bit like water torture - sorry about that.
> 
>> If I go to Microchip Direct and ask for a PIC 18F with two
>> UARTS and two A/D's I get the PIC18F86J72 and PIC 18F87J72.
>> To me the second one is the obvious winner. It's got twice
>> the flash for next to nothing more money. 1-25 piece price is
>> $6.04.
> 
>> Same search, 1 A/D, 4 UARTS, lowest cost this time. PIC18F65J94
>> is the winner. Lowest price package is $3.30 in 1-25 pieces.
> 
> 4 UARTS are untypical for PICs and result in higher price
> as the device usually has more pins (which makes them more
> expensive)

The ARM that the thread was looking at was a 6 UART / 4 A/D part. Thus the "load up the UARTS". Also the starting point for all this did involve serial i/o.

> 
>> Are those some *very* arbitrary choices - you bet they are.
>> They are random picks, and were not optimized to show any
>> particular thing. Only to target an application that had some
>> serial i/o and a bit of A/D involvement.
> 
>> Bottom line - not all PIC's are $1. once you start adding
>> peripherals. For $6 over in ARM land, you can get a lot of
>> chip. To be fair, my experience has been that you can do better
>> in the PIC24 line once you start adding stuff. Searching the
>> PIC24's is hard enough that my brief search tonight did not
>> show up a lower cost part.
> 
> PIC24F04KA200 1 UART, 10 ADC, XLP, 1.38 USD (1.05 USD @1k)
> PIC24EP32GP202 2 UART, 6 ADC, 2.76 USD (1.86 USD @1k)

I knew they had to be there. Again suggesting that the PIC24's probably are a better starting point these days.

> 
> One (dis)advantage of the Microchip PICs is that there
> are so many different families and parts.

Indeed

Bob

> 
> best,
> Herbert
> 
>> Bob
> 
>> On May 25, 2013, at 9:05 PM, Bob Camp <lists at rtty.us> wrote:
> 
>>> Hi
> 
>>> I just realized the "buy direct" button on that page requires a login. The single piece direct price is $9.70. First price break is at 25 pieces (to $8.95).
> 
>>> Bob
> 
>>> On May 25, 2013, at 8:56 PM, Bob Camp <lists at rtty.us> wrote:
> 
>>>> Hi
> 
>>>> It's one of the Freescale K60's they have them in several speeds and packages. Others have similar parts.
> 
>>>> http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=K60_120&nodeId=01624698C9DE2DDDAF&tab=Buy_Parametric_Tab&fromSearch=false
> 
>>>> hopefully shows the family information
> 
>>>> The first part on the list is the MK60FN1M0VLQ12 for 8% more money you can get the 150 MHz core rather than the 120 MHz core version. Both have enough pins that you can get at a lot of the peripherals at once. Both have enough pins that they are not a lot of fun to solder by hand. Of course their BGA cousins are even less hand solder friendly….
> 
>>>> Bob
> 
> 
>>>> On May 25, 2013, at 6:48 PM, Graham / KE9H <timenut at austin.rr.com> wrote:
> 
>>>>> On 5/25/2013 3:40 PM, Bob Camp wrote:
>>>>>> You can get a part with 1MB of flash, 128KB of ram, 6 UARTS, 4 16 bit A/D's, 10/100 Ethernet, USB, and a bunch of other stuff for less than $10. Drop this and that, go to half the flash, and yup, the price is 1/2. Comes with a free toolchain and two very capable free versions of RTOS.
> 
> 
>>>>> Bob:
> 
>>>>> I was wondering which manufacturer/part you were referring to.
> 
>>>>> Thanks,
>>>>> --- Graham
> 
>>>>> ==
> 
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