How to choose a MicroController

Step 16 Other Interesting Microcontrollers

- Cypress PSOC
- Renesas (Hitachi) H8, M6

Comments

[kiaas]

The Propeller is an interesting Microcontroller, 32bit, and 8 cores, capable of 160MIP, has its own High level language called SPIN, and assembly language. the starter kit costs 70 dollars.
http://www.parallax.com

[atzakas]

I would also add:
- Infineon C167
http://www.infineon.com/cms/en/product/channel.html?channel=ff80808112ab681d0112ab6b2dfc0756
- Rabbit Microcontrollers
www.rabbitsemiconductor.com/

[westfw]

Is there a particularly good "training board" for the C167? There are some chips that I've pretty much avoided because there didn't seem to be much in the way of "entry level." H8's fell in this category, although recently Renesas has been very generous with small evaluation kits.

[atzakas]

It's true that there is no inexpensive training board for the Infineon, at least not one under 100$. The one I used was a 'phycore c167' from Phytec. But yes, the ones you mention are the most popular and affordable to a new comer in embedded systems. I am looking forward to reading more of your articles on the topic. Argyrios

[VIRON]

I once had a dozen UV-eraseable H8 microcontrollers but couldn't find any info on the web except maybe only the pinout and instruction set. I assumed they were obsolete since they were pulled from a CP/M based industrial machine with a few Z-80's, so I sold them on eBay and someone needed them a lot more than I did. I was also disappointed that they were not Z-80 based microcontrollers.

[lakata]

Cypress PSoCs (Programmable System on Chip) are interesting. They attempt to merge a decent microcontroller with programmable analog circuitry (real analog, not digitally simulated). However, the analog circuitry is extremely barebones and not terribly impressive, and peripherals such as DACs and ADCS are better done on PICs! That said, the free IDE is very interesting and unique. They have attempted to get rid of all printed documentation and tighly integrated the documentation right into the GUI. The GUI is essentially a PDF viewer that lets you configure the entire chip graphically, and then will generate a PDF "datasheet' based on your design.

One word of advice - You must first configure the chip *before* you design your schematic. The interconnect of analog blocks is extremely limited, so there is usually only one way to do it, even if it looks like you can wire any device to any pin.