Best (and cheapest) microcontroller to learn to program with?

[cledford]

What would be the best Microcontroller to learn to build a paintball board with? Preferable one that has a wealth of public domain/free compliers and what-not to be had.

Also, if someone wanted to start playing around with the Emag board what would they need?

I've seen Bill Mills/Warpig article on the basic stamp - but I'm figuring that something a little more modern is used these days...

-Calvin

[athomas]

I'm interested in this myself. I'm sure someone here has the wealth of knowledge we are seeking.

[SlartyBartFast]

Originally posted by athomas
I'm interested in this myself. I'm sure someone here has the wealth of knowledge we are seeking.

I wouldn't bother with the basic stamp. Learn assembler and use PICmicro or Atmel controllers. If you want to mess with Emags, look into Atmel.

The manufacturers provide all the software tools necessary. Programmers can be purchased or scratch built.

[athomas]

Excellent. Thanks

http://www.atmel.com/dyn/products/to...?family_id=607

[ScatterPlot]

Try the OOPic at http://www.oopic2.com .I haven't used it, but it looks pretty simple. It is pretty big however.

[SlartyBartFast]

Originally posted by bertmcmahan
Try the OOPic at http://www.oopic2.com .I haven't used it, but it looks pretty simple. It is pretty big however.

Very similar to a BASICStamp or the Javelin (Java version). Would simplify the development of projects, but not particularly suitable for production items (cost/size/performance).

[GoatBoy]

masochists

I think you'd sort of have to be a masochist to actually WANT to do everything in assembly. I don't recommend using BASIC... I think BASIC does have enough functionality, but it's just... dirty.

As far as I'm concerned, ease of use involves at least two things: 1. not having to mess with an external clock/RC circuit, and 2. a C compiler.

I'm not familiar with the Atmel stuff, but as has been mentioned, I guess that's what the Emags use. As far as PICs, a good microcontroller for little projects would seem to be something like the PIC 12F629. It has an internal oscillator and 6 general purpose I/O pins. I forget what the difference is between the 12F629 and 12F675; probably some analog/digital functionality as it usually is. I haven't used the chip myself, although I've been looking at it for possible use.

There's a free compiler from Hi-tech here . I've used the compiler with a 16F84 and it seemed fine.

I don't know what the cheapest route for programming one of these things is; I have a WARP-13 myself, but that would be overkill for you.




And while I'm thinking about if, if you have a GameBoy Advance, you could probably piddle with that as well. The link port has like 4 I/O pins that can be "abused" as general purpose parallel I/O's. You don't even need a flash cartridge to run programs on it; you can buy a MBV2 cable which boots the GBA with code from your PC and runs it. And of course, it wouldn't fit the bill if it didn't have a C compiler -- and it does! There are gcc cross compilers and even development environments, all free (check out www.ngine.de). Obviously (or perhaps not so obviously, considering how much gear some of you wear onto the field) you wouldn't use this in the final product, but if you structured your code right, you could proto it on a GBA and then move it over to some other microcontroller without too much fuss, especially since you wrote it in C, not assembly.



Heh, I just realized the glaring disparity between the two solutions I offered. One's a single 8-pin DIP, the other's an entire game console. Must be the voices in my head...