How to choose a MicroController

Step 14 Texas Instrument MSP430 micropower Microcontrollers

Texas Instruments garnered some interest when they introduced (bought?) their MSP430 series of extemely low-power microcontrollers. Until recently, most of the MSP430s were only available in assorted hobbyist-unfriendly SMT packages, but a couple of recent chips have been introduced in DIP packages. And there's a low cost USB-development dongle that offers better than the usual functionality for such things, so maybe things are looking up.

The MSP430 is one of the few natively 16-bit architetcures in the microcontroller world.

• There's currently a rather cool $20 USB stick development system offered: eZ430-F2013
• TI's MSP430 Overview page They have free online training, too. Every year about the beginning of may (4/30, get it?) they have a free seminar given at various locations around the country. Usually this includes a giveaway (last year it was one of the eZ430 things.) Worthwhile.
• Trip report to an Early TI seminar Describes 430 basics (by me)
• MSP430 Application Reports Nice document by Lutz Bierl
• MSP430 Yahoo Group pretty good forum.

Comments

[westfw]

Was your experience with the MSP430 processors? For a large company like TI, support can vary greatly from one product line to another. I've been pretty impressed with the way TI has been handling the MSP430 (not that I've stressed their support; just the seminars and products...) OTOH, as a hobbyist/student, I don't expect a good deal of support to come from the manufacturer anyway; "user community" support is more important.

[spinach_dip]

FYI: TI has some of the worst customer support in the business, at least when I have tried to use it. I'm sure there is plenty of help from the open-source community for the MSP430 but I wouldn't expect much from TI's tech support. On another note, the MSP430 has had GNU gcc ported to it, google mspgcc.