
The Amazing $1 Microcontroller (2017) - howard941
https://jaycarlson.net/microcontrollers/
======
neya
My favorite is the ATTINY 85. It's so cheap and yet, it can do almost most of
the things you can do an Arduino. And yes, you can program it using the
Arduino IDE as well.

Last year, I started out to digitalize my entire house with these tiny ATTINY
85 chips and with some nrF wireless chips. It has worked really well for me
and I'm able to control and monitor any power port in my house as well as my
mains.

The overall setup still costed less than a Nest, yet, vastly more powerful. Of
course, the downside is you need to write code, have a running server to
control it on the cloud. But, no problem for me as I'm a (Google Cloud)
consultant and this is what I do for a living.

I use Google Cloud's IAP with AppEngine (I may switch to cloud run now, since
it's cheaper tho) and I have a private REST server running that I can access
from my own Android app.

The whole thing took me a year to finish, but that's because I worked on it
maybe once or twice a week in the weekends and didn't focus on it much.

But, my effort has paid off and it's amazing to me that what is possible with
just a dollar investment.

~~~
cr0sh
Are you in the United States?

I'm just curious how your homeowner's insurance feels about this? That is,
will they still pay out for a claim should something happen, and they
determine your modifications were at fault?

Because if the adjuster or whomever does find you have such modifications -
they -will- blame those.

And probably deny your claim and coverage (and probably cancel your policy).

At least that would likely be your experience if you live in the United
States.

I've often thought that having such a system would be fun, but the potential
downside should anything go wrong has put a damper on it (even if whatever
happened was not related to your modifications - they will blame it on them,
just to get out of the claim).

The only "inexpensive" way around it is to use UL listed interfaces made by a
third party, then interface with those. But there, you don't usually get
everything you want.

Of course at that point, the insurance company might just shift the burden on
you to "So, did you have this done by a licensed electrician? Where is your
inspection report?"...

~~~
fenwick67
"Because if the adjuster or whomever does find you have such modifications -
they -will- blame those.

And probably deny your claim and coverage (and probably cancel your policy)."

I'm skeptical that an insurance company will be able to determine exactly what
part you used and if it was UL listed unless you yourself tell them

~~~
close04
If an incident occurs and they identify additional components connected to the
"trigger" you'd have to provide the whole "paper trail" for every single bit
of your setup and show that it's above board: were the components certified
for the use, were they installed by authorized personnel, were they operated
properly, was the code you wrote for it to blame, etc. If you handled all the
implementation yourself then it's hard to pass the responsibility along. While
not impossible, it's still a high bar. And you wouldn't be in the best
position to fight.

If it's an electrical fire and they find modifications to the electrical
wiring the chances of getting the insurance money are slim. Unless those
modifications are explicitly covered by the insurance.

Given the kind of exposure insurance companies have they are willing to invest
a lot in fighting the payout. It's their business model.

~~~
fr0sty
> you'd have to provide the whole "paper trail" for every single bit of your
> setup

Can you cite any firsthand account of this sort of thing happening somewhere
in the US? Given the ease with which people can reach millions of people with
their tale of woe/outrage the fact that such stories are not readily available
on social media makes me think this is mostly urban legend.

~~~
close04
Not sure I understand, you think it's an urban legend that an insurance
company will do what it can to avoid a payout especially when the incident
involves unauthorized modifications to the electrical wiring of the house,
which ended up triggering a fire?

There's no need to cite firsthand accounts, you will find this in your own
insurance contract. Insurance works pretty much the same everywhere,
unauthorized modifications (especially to critical systems) usually invalidate
any insurance claim when they can be linked to the incident. [0] Electrical
wiring, plumbing, structure of the building, safety or security systems, etc.
And it makes perfect sense if you think about it.

[0] [http://www.insurancequotes.org/renters/3-major-diy-
mistakes-...](http://www.insurancequotes.org/renters/3-major-diy-mistakes-
that-can-affect-insurance/)

~~~
fr0sty
I believe it is an urban legend that homeowner's insurance claims
(specifically fire damage to structure or other contents) are being denied
with any frequency because a 'homebrew' contraption was present in the home,
adjacent to the start of the fire, or even the source of ignition.

Here is a link to a sample Homeowner's policy:
[https://www.iii.org/sites/default/files/docs/pdf/HO3_sample....](https://www.iii.org/sites/default/files/docs/pdf/HO3_sample.pdf)

Exclusion B on page 12 is probably the relevant section. It excludes loss due
to "Faulty, inadequate or defective:... workmanship, re- pair, construction,
renovation, remodeling,..." but also contains an "ensuing loss" exception.

Here is an article about that: [https://www.irmi.com/articles/expert-
commentary/ensuing-loss...](https://www.irmi.com/articles/expert-
commentary/ensuing-loss-getting-around-a-property-policys-defective-
construction-exclusion)

> A classic example [of an ensuing loss exception] is if faulty repair
> resulted in improper wiring and the improper wiring caused a fire. _Almost
> every insurer would pay for the fire damage,_ but not for the repair of the
> improper wiring.

~~~
close04
Two things to consider:

1) The insurance company will more often than not sue the party responsible
for the faulty workmanship that triggered the incident to recover the money
(I've seen this happen). In this case the owner _is_ that party.

2) One real example is enough to show it's not a legend and you provided it
yourself:

> Some courts have upheld this rather cramped reading of the exclusion, while
> others construe it properly and require insurers to pay for the water damage

Since it's upheld in court I find your statement that it's an urban legend
pretty confusing. It's like showing a picture of the night sky to prove the
Sun is a myth.

YMMV of course, you should read your own contract to see what's stipulated and
how comprehensive it is, and case law in your jurisdiction to see if courts
would rule in your favor. But better be safe and start from the assumption
that the "urban legend" is real since courts support it. It's the kind of
legend that might cost you money.

~~~
fr0sty
Are you saying you know of an instance where an insurance company sued their
own customer for accidentally burning down their own house? I'd like to know
more about the particulars because that sounds like another urban legend.

~~~
close04
> that sounds like _another_ urban legend

Another? Didn't we clear this one already above when your link showed courts
upheld the "legend"? Are you contradicting me or the courts? Feels like you're
no longer looking for any evidence, just grasping at straws.

Plenty of resources that tell you that it's perfectly possible to get no
payout (depends on your contract of course)[0][1]. Or they will pay out but
capped to a low figure [3]. Again, read your contract and decide what applies
to you, pray there's no fineprint to screw you over.

[0]
[https://www.boss.info/us/consumer_warning/](https://www.boss.info/us/consumer_warning/)

> unauthorized modification of electrical wiring may void your homeowners fire
> insurance policy

[1] [https://www.quora.com/Is-it-illegal-to-do-electrical-
tasks-w...](https://www.quora.com/Is-it-illegal-to-do-electrical-tasks-
without-a-license-or-is-it-just-preferred-by-companies-and-the-buyers-market)

> Most jurisdictions require a permit to be pulled for most electrical work

[3]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/HomeImprovement/comments/7vwe23/doe...](https://www.reddit.com/r/HomeImprovement/comments/7vwe23/does_anyone_have_hard_evidence_that_homeowners/)

P.S. No, I do not know any cases where the owner was sued but I do know many
cases where the insurance company payed out and then sued the company that did
the faulty repairs to recover the entire payout. I also know one case where a
faulty repair done by the owner caused a fire that injured the tenant - the
owner was found guilty of recklessness/gross negligence (no idea about the
insurance in that case).

------
blhack
I feel obligated to mention in every one of these threads the wemos D1.

I actually have a tough time explaining just how incredible this board is. You
can program it in the Arduino environment, meaning if you are doing any hobby
electronics, you're probably already really familiar with the programming
modalities.

It comes with a programmer, and power regulator. No fussing with anything like
you might have to with a bare ESP8266.

It also has WiFi. It is _the_ magic internet of things that I swear everybody
was dreaming about 5 years ago. Go buy 10 of them. They're my favorite
favorite favorite general purpose dev board right now, and actually they're so
cheap that I have no problem putting them into "finished products"[1].

Here they are for about $3:
([https://www.aliexpress.com/item/ESP8266-ESP-12F-CH340-CH340G...](https://www.aliexpress.com/item/ESP8266-ESP-12F-CH340-CH340G-V2-1-0-WIFI-
Expansion-Board-Module-Based-ESP8266-Micro-
USB/32963411851.html?spm=2114.search0104.3.3.226f11cc81cPtk&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_6_10065_10130_10068_10890_10547_319_10546_317_10548_10545_10696_453_10084_454_10083_10618_10307_537_536_10059_10884_10887_321_322_10103,searchweb201603_52,ppcSwitch_0&algo_expid=a10ec08c-7bb2-4299-a8eb-79e1f5bc42ad-0&algo_pvid=a10ec08c-7bb2-4299-a8eb-79e1f5bc42ad))

[1]: I build custom/one-off large scale installation pieces and hardware
prototypes. Almost every single one of them has an arduino-ish device in it
somewhere.

~~~
gmiller123456
I actually prefer the Wemos D1 Mini. The D1 you linked has the same header
layout as the Arduino, which might confuse a lot of people that you can use
Arduino shields. Some of them might work, but probably not without modifying
the libraries for them.

The D1 Mini actually has it's own shield format, and several shields are
available. Even experienced people will find value in the ability to just plug
in a display, or other device and use already available libraries. Maybe not
great for production work, but great for prototyping and learning.

I think the big downfall with any ESP8266 board compared to others is going to
be power consumption, even with WiFi off. So anyone not plugging theirs into a
wall should do some research in that area.

~~~
slhomme
I just got into the micro controller world a few days ago and it's
overwhelming how many options there are! Between the pi, the Arduino, the
ESP8266, Wemos ans so so many more which all come in so many flavors it's
really tricky to the "ideal" one for a beginner like myself. The project I
have in mind would require to work on batteries as opposed to plugin it into a
well. It sounds like you're suggesting that anything ESP8266-based would not
be ideal not plugged into a wall. Could you share some pointers to what
alternative might be better for very low consumption but still has wifi
capabilities? Thanks a lot! I'll keep digging in the meantime, this is a
fascinating world I'me happy to explore!

~~~
drewfish
Depends on what you mean by "very low consumption". For one project I used a
SparkFun SAMD21 Mini Breakout[0], and with the RTCZero[1] library was pretty
easily able to get it down to 0.3mA when sleeping and averaging 1.3mA overall.
(OK, I had to desolder the power LED which was eating 3mA.) I've since
switched over to using Adafruit Feather M0 boards for most stuff, which is
basically the same thing.

[0]
[https://www.sparkfun.com/products/13664](https://www.sparkfun.com/products/13664)
[1]
[https://www.arduino.cc/en/Reference/RTC](https://www.arduino.cc/en/Reference/RTC)

edit: Oh sorry I missed the "with wifi" in your post. One nice thing about the
ESP8266 is that lots of people use it -- hopefully that means you can find
details on how to run it in low power modes.

~~~
slhomme
Nice, thanks a lot for the info that's going to be helpful. I'll look into
these!

------
xondono
my takes from my +10 years on this sector:

\- Unless you are building something with high volumes (or something trivially
easy), development costs are going to be your biggest expense by far,
specially firmware/software.

\- Using cheap parts is nice, and if you come from the DIY world you will know
many such parts. If you are going to build something commercially, _avoid_
those things like the plague, because they will become the biggest sinkhole of
technological debt.

\- Software/Apps behave like high-risk investments (natural monopolies, zero-
or-nothing situations, low initial costs), electronics behaves more like long
term investments (high initial costs, high development path dependency). It's
way more profitable to have a product you barely have to touch (but sells
well), than several that need constant modifications.

Which leads me to some tips:

\- There's not much sense in 8 bit / 16 bit microcontrollers for most projects
nowadays. Don't fear going to 32 bit.

\- MIPS/AVR are nice, but if you are building something that is not a one-off
(or you plan to build on the product), go with ARM (for now).

\- Build your PoC and prototypes on manufacturer libraries, but once you have
the resources for it, well-thought and tailored libraries will make your life
easier.

\- When working on libraries, don't write them directly from the datasheet. Go
for the family references, target the whole family instead of a single chip.

\- Before chosing any component, specially the ones that are hard to replace,
price is secondary at best. Availability is _way_ more important.

\- If you are willing to take some risk, look at Rust for embedded. The
language is still 'young' and there's a lot of stuff that needs to settle
down, but man, does it look good.

~~~
d21d3q
And for PoC pick one with more memory - e.g. you can find chip (like
stm32f0x1) with same pinout, peripherals - you can optimize that later, and
don't worry about it while using fat libraries.

------
jhallenworld
It's missing the below 5 cents microcontrollers:

[https://lcsc.com/product-detail/PADAUK_PADAUK-Tech-
PMS150C_C...](https://lcsc.com/product-detail/PADAUK_PADAUK-Tech-
PMS150C_C129127.html)

~~~
bmcooley
I looked through the datasheet, but couldn't figure out what "1KW" of program
memory meant.

~~~
magicalhippo
It's supposed to be 1kW, ie 1024 words.

------
iheartpotatoes
Having used half the IDE's this person outlined, I really really really really
wish every single one had a "write Makefile" option. Maybe 1/4 or the IDEs I
use do that successfully. I always end up using GDB for debugging, and then
the IDE for asm-level tweaking (well, I don't do the tweaking, someone smarter
than me does :), but I can do 90% of my work in GDB).

In the "real world" IAR Embedded Workshop is the hands-down winner (licenses
are $$$$$$), which is unfortunate because despite being so mature it is
awfully clunky.

~~~
feistypharit
You actually can use make instead of the Arduino IDE many times. For the ESP,
check out
[https://github.com/plerup/makeEspArduino](https://github.com/plerup/makeEspArduino).
It works reasonably well.

~~~
iheartpotatoes
Yeah, I didn't know that existed but I created my own make environment a while
back. My arduinos have been gathering dust for about 5 years, ever since I
discovered the ST nucleo64 line ... 80MHz, 1M flash, 256K sram, 4 UARTs, 4
SPI, 4 I2C, 20+ GPIO, 4 ADCs for under US$15 ... I pretty much stopped using
Arduino everything.

~~~
chillingeffect
Me, too. But now that I've found the Teensy 3.6, it's my new goto. It's too
expensive, but it has all the power. Also, I've been doing embedded for over
20 years and I'm starting to appreciate the simplicity of Arduino. It does get
most of the job done. And when I had to modify the drivres, I was able to
write completely low-level code. Only walls I've run into are tweaking the
linker file. I haven't been able to locate that :(

[https://www.pjrc.com/store/teensy36.html](https://www.pjrc.com/store/teensy36.html)

------
ChuckMcM
This was well done.

As I have mentioned in the past, my discussions with people at Microchip and
Motorola have conceded that with modern process technology the cost of the
silicon is insignificant compared to the cost of packaging and testing. As a
result you get to about $1/chip in singles as the low price cut-off but you
can put an 8 bit, 16 bit, or 32 bit processor in there and it doesn't change
the cost. It can cost more if you add a _lot_ more FLASH or RAM. That takes up
silicon real estate and is longer to test so it can reach the point where the
dice is once again a meaningful contributor to the cost.

~~~
patrickyeon
I guess that makes sense, and it's not a particularly new phenomenon. The MOS
6507 (used in the Atari 2600) was mostly the same silicon as the 6502 (as used
in Apple II and many other places), but cheaper because it was in a smaller
package.

------
SlowRobotAhead
The writer was on an episode of Embedded.fm podcast awhile back, one of the
rare ones where they really get into embedded in detail. Good episode, I
recommend it.

Two take-aways were that he just loved the Silicon Labs EFM series, which is a
modern set of peripherals wrapped around an absolutely outdated 8051. For the
most part micros are just moving things from one peripheral to another and
that can work out just fine. It's nice SI used SWD/JTAG as the debug
peripheral so you can program it along side all the ARM parts you're actually
going to use.

And two... Having used almost everything on this list. I'm going to chose the
ARM M0/M0+ 10 times out of 10 anymore. Maybe I prefer STM's peripherals to
Atmel's event-eccentric, or whatever. I just can't honestly see starting a new
project today on 8051, PIC16/24, AVR etc. Maybe it's what you're used to. Or
maybe for someone making landfill-ready toys with razor thin margins, but I'm
glad that's not me.

~~~
voltagex_
>8051

TI is still pumping out Zigbee boards based on it. I had to dig through
documentation and tick a box saying I wasn't going to make missiles just to
figure out what I needed to program it.

I'm kinda curious about 8051 chips. They're absolutely everywhere, although
maybe now the Espressif chips are taking over.

~~~
SlowRobotAhead
8051 is OLD, Espressif is far newer.

I like the amount of support that ESP gets but would personally never use it
because I told trust Chinese networking chips.

The 8051 makes absolutely no sense to anyone - except when you consider the
extreme low cost.

In the example of the SiLabs parts, they took the modern peripherals from
their ARM chips and plopped them down to a 8051 core. Some times that will
work great, but if you are doing any “real work” (preocessing) on chip just go
with ARM. But, he, sometimes you need to toggle some LEDs and write something
out over SPI.

------
Darkphibre
Oh, I _really_ like his analysis on "Parametric Reach" for the various
architectures:

> If you want to commit to a single architecture, it’s important to know which
> one gives you the most headroom to move up. I created a fictious “times
> better” score by comparing the the part tested with the best part available
> in the same ecosystem — this usually means fairly comparable peripheral
> programming, along with identical development tools. I multiplied the core
> speed, package size, flash, and RAM capacities together, ratioed the two
> parts, and then took the quartic root. Essentially, if every parameter is
> double, it is considered “2.0 x” as powerful.

~~~
iheartpotatoes
He should have used the geometric mean, that's exactly what it is designed
for.

~~~
teraflop
Multiplying four values together and taking their fourth root _is_ the
geometric mean.

~~~
iheartpotatoes
Aaaand its too late for me to delete my post.

------
copperx
I would love to see a comparison of instruction sets for assembly programming.
Sure, only a few people are going to program in asm, but a microcontroller is
the best way to play with it.

The MSP430 instruction set is somewhat friendly, but I long for the days of
the Motorola MC68hc11. That was a beautiful instruction set, especially for
teaching.

Does anybody know how these chips fare for raw assembly programming?

~~~
hajile
I'd guess that 8051 is the easiest. I suspect that a huge percent of 8051 is
still hand-coded assembly. It has an accumulator architecture and the
instructions were made with hand-coding in mind (plus, there's not very many
of them). I remember it being pretty easy to learn, but that was a long time
ago. To me, RISC assembly tends to be quite a bit more complicated to write by
hand.

[https://www.slideshare.net/Andriblovers/8051-instruction-
set...](https://www.slideshare.net/Andriblovers/8051-instruction-set-12522439)

------
setquk
I'm playing with the PIC10F320 at the moment. Minimalism is fun. $0.50 in 1
off quantities. 6-pin SOT-23 package. 16MHz. 0.5K of program space. 64 bytes
of RAM. Waveform generator. ADC. Timers. PWM and the coolest thing a
configurable logic cell which works while the CPU is asleep.

I've got a semi-working morse iambic keyer in that and it uses 40uA of current
running flat out. I'm working on sleeps now. I reckon I can get it down to
100nA average based on the wake time and 20nA sleep current. I can't actually
measure down that low even with my 5.5 digit HP 3478A

~~~
cushychicken
Eight bit micros are the most fun.

------
FrojoS
For those who needs something more beefy, check out
[https://www.nxp.com/support/developer-
resources/evaluation-a...](https://www.nxp.com/support/developer-
resources/evaluation-and-development-boards/freedom-development-boards/mcu-
boards/freedom-development-platform-for-
kinetis-k66-k65-and-k26-mcus:FRDM-K66F) They are about 60 USD per board,
though if you want only the chip for a final product, it will become much
cheaper.

We use these development boards in combination with freeRTOS (bare C based)
for lots of projects in our lab that require high sampling rates (e.g. 8
analog sensor readings at 1 kHz) motor control loops etc.

There is a very good blog on these chips at mcuoneclipse.com

------
MrBuddyCasino
One Dollar? Pah! I present to you the Padauk PMS150C three cent MCU. Its just
one-time programmable, so better get it right the first time.

[https://hackaday.com/2019/04/26/making-a-three-cent-
microcon...](https://hackaday.com/2019/04/26/making-a-three-cent-
microcontroller-useful/)

------
sgt
I like MSP430 a lot but the tooling leaves a bit to be desired. Maybe that's
been improved upon recently by TI but a few years back you were left with few
choices other than installing some kind of IDE on Windows.

~~~
pmorici
TI distributes a pre-compiled version of GCC [0] for the MSP430 along with a
command line MSP-flasher [1] utility for flashing code to the device. It all
works really well on Linux. I haven't had to touch any of their windows tools.
It can be slightly confusing getting started because there are 101 different
ways to develop and compilers you could use so you have to wade though
examples that may not be applicable to your chosen development environment.
Once you get past that it isn't hard. I really like the tutorial series on
simplyembeded [2] they to a great job of covering the MSP430 basics.

[0] [http://software-
dl.ti.com/msp430/msp430_public_sw/mcu/msp430...](http://software-
dl.ti.com/msp430/msp430_public_sw/mcu/msp430/MSPGCC/latest/index_FDS.html) [1]
[http://www.ti.com/tool/MSP430-FLASHER](http://www.ti.com/tool/MSP430-FLASHER)
[2]
[http://www.simplyembedded.org/tutorials/](http://www.simplyembedded.org/tutorials/)

------
peter_d_sherman
Amazing article! (I was utterly unaware that this amount of choice and
selection of microcontrollers exist, much less at this price point(!) --
before having read this article... you put a lot of work into this article and
it shows.)

This will be my new, first, go-to article, if I begin any new projects
involving microcontrollers in the future...

------
tombert
I very recently started getting into microcontroller programming, and have
subsequently purchased a plethora of different ESP chips on Banggood for
roughly $3-8 a pop (though all of them have WiFi built in, and a few even came
with cameras).

I would actually be curious how these controllers compare to a $1 chip.

------
pinewurst
This is great but it should be noted that it dates from 2017.

~~~
dang
OK, added. Thanks!

------
ThePhysicist
It is really mind-bogging how fast processors are these days. A few days ago I
read the marketing copy for the iPad Pro on the Apple website, where they said
that their neural processor can perform more than five trillion operations per
second. Initially I thought they translated it wrong from English to German
(one trillion is "eine Billion" in German), but I rechecked it and it seems
correct and actually makes sense for a highly parallel architecture that runs
at a few GHz per second. Granted it costs more than $1 (though the production
cost without factoring in R&D might actually be in that range) but it's still
amazing that you can just carry such a thing around in your pocket.

------
spacedog11
The title is misleading because only the chip by itself costs $1. If you buy
the microcontroller( chip + peripherals), it costs more than $1. For example
MSP430: [https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Texas-
Instruments/MSP-E...](https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Texas-
Instruments/MSP-EXP430G2?qs=CLImetaeaXWH2pYG%252BA%252B4Vw%3D%3D)

~~~
patrickyeon
"Microcontroller" refers to everything on the chip (usually, we would talk
about it having a "core" roughly akin to memory + ALU + such, and
"peripherals" which are on-chip dedicated hardware that migh be eg. I2C or USB
communications, timers, ADCs, etc). What you're linking to we would call a
"development board" (dev board), "demo board", "eval(uation) kit".

I don't consider the title misleading, as the article is aimed at the people
who are designing their own (hobbyist probably, but not exclusively) boards,
and will be integrating the chip, not a dev board, into their project.

------
ryukoposting
Those Infineon chips are incredible for how inexpensive they are. I've worked
with an XMC1400 at work (another one of their M0-based offerings) and it was
insane how sophisticated the peripherals on those things are, despite being a
dirt cheap part.

That said, their IDE sucks (well, every manufacturer-provided IDE sucks, but
whatever). Life is way easier with a couple makefiles and Ozone.

------
roland35
This is a great round up of cheap microcontrollers - I would love to take that
approach of "scoring" peripherals to be able to compare various vendor's
offerings up and down the lineups!

As of right now it is hard to compare families at the start of a project, most
of the time we just go with what we are comfortable with (and haven't been
burned by in the last project!)

------
krm01
What I really would like to see is some more competition and price drops in
displays. These microcontrollers are awesome and I love building small
hardware projects. But the output systems are usually pricey. If color
(ideally touch) displays can be made available for $5-$7. That would open up a
flood gate of opportunities.

~~~
leggomylibro
Color displays _are_ available for $5-7, although they are usually only 2-4"
diagonally with up to 240x320 pixels at 16-18 bits of color per pixel.

But it definitely did open up a flood gate of opportunity. You see ILI9341 and
ST7735 TFT displays all over the place, even if they're a little too small for
large pieces of equipment.

Not to mention the explosion in cheap individually-addressable color LEDs and
drone-driven advances in small DC motors. It's fantastic, you can pretty much
just plug electronics together like Lego bricks at this point.

------
sbradford26
I started learning embedded programming on ATMELs and to this day they are
still my favorite. Solid documentation and pretty good command line tools when
you don't want to use an IDE. Also you can find them sometimes in a dip
package which is handy for prototyping.

------
childintime
The Renesas RX200 family would be a nice addition to the list. I'm curious how
it fares against the ARM competition.

The most amazing ESP8266 also reached $1 in volume, but isn't really
comparable to other MCU's, with very few pins and a crippled ADC.

~~~
SlowRobotAhead
>The Renesas RX200 family would be a nice addition to the list.

Can you show where you're finding RX200s for under a dollar?

Because... I was interested having never seen almost anything from Renesas
near what I would consider a good deal. I can't seem to find anything even
close [0] this being the cheapest RX200 chip I could find at $1.70 @ 5k [1]

[0]
[https://www.digikey.com/products/en?dc=49904](https://www.digikey.com/products/en?dc=49904)
[1] [https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/renesas-
electronic...](https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/renesas-electronics-
america/R5F523T5ADFL-30/R5F523T5ADFL-30-ND/5719859)

~~~
childintime
FYI we buy the RX231 with USB below $1 (in volumes well above 5k). You're
right that Renesas doesn't compete in online stores, they don't even try.

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pizza
Anybody know any awesome cheap Raspberry Pi Zero W alternatives? Primarily
looking for something ultra cheap, tiny form factor, not especially power-
hungry, able to run not-too-weird flavors of linux, and preferably with
(wireless) networking.

~~~
ebcode
Have you seen the VoCore2? Ameridroid has them in stock.

[https://vocore.io/v2.html](https://vocore.io/v2.html)

~~~
ameridroid
VoCore store at ameriDroid.com:

[https://ameridroid.com/search?q=vocore*&type=article,page,pr...](https://ameridroid.com/search?q=vocore*&type=article,page,product)

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OrgNet
I love my D1 Minis/ESP8266 that include wifi... got them for about $2 each and
they can be programmed using USB (or even wirelessly).

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tronko
Stupid question, would it have some sense to use a big array of these
microcontrollers to create an actual chip neural network?

~~~
jononor
Would only make sense as an art project, imo. If you want to run neural
networks on micro-controllers, one ARM Cortex M4F (or M7/H7) will get you
pretty far. Audio Classification with tens of classes, as well as low-
resolution image classification.

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zw123456
Excellent work. The next time I am doing a project where I get to choose which
MCU to use I have this write up book marked.

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MagicPropmaker
I like the Pic16 because you need very little external circuitry other than
the chip to get a computer running.

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bborud
If you work with multiple kinds of Microcontrollers I think you'd appreciate
the Platformio.org project.

------
snvzz
Obligatory mention of ESP32. It might not be $1 but it's definitely worth
being aware of.

~~~
penagwin
And the ESP8266. Not as fancy but it's half the price. I love both the ESP8266
and the ESP32 a ton. They really made wifi projects "cheap" for entry-
hobbyists instead of some 70USD wifi shield.

------
rramadass
Excellent article! Thank you.

One of the few i will be consulting regularly.

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candiodari
Anyone know a good microcontroller with at least 3 DACs ?

~~~
unwind
Did you look in the STM32 line?

The first I found was the STM32F3x4 line [1], they have up to 3 DACs with
12-bit precsion it sounds like.

Not sure about pricing, a quick Digikey search shows the STM32F334C4T6 listing
at $3.72 in singles. ST has development boards too, didn't price those.

~~~
candiodari
I think you may have forgotten the actual link.

------
hackyhawk
Ah yes, the tape-over-LED April Fools Joke

------
danimal88
This is really missing the ESP8266 imho

------
scrape_it
is it possible to somehow buy this off-line in person in mass quantities?
seems like it takes ages to ship from alibaba, _also I 'm afraid of the
Chinese government tapping my phone (as I suspect happened on WeChat I
foolishly installed, literally seduced by this Chinese chick who claims she's
in Vancouver but then doesn't know where Surrey is???? red flags)
potentially_, so I want to tinker with these interesting DIY projects and get
started with soldering and PCB etc., but I always can't be at complete comfort
(I am well aware and conscious of the fact that my privacy standards are in
the extremes), knowing what I read on HN all the time, maybe it's a good time
to take a break.

So I would really love it if somebody could sell me large bulk of various
stuff like this that you could literally get from Alibaba in some vain hope
that some wholesale buyer/middle man can make a premium off this paranoia, I'd
gladly pay $3~$4 for this if it meant that somebody bought like a million of
these for $10,000, and then sold me a chunk of that (at a markup of course
which I'm more than happy to pay for the same reason people use VPN and
Incognito or Tor), why not for electronics?

tl;dr: Looking for somebody to start a wholesale brick and mortar business
based on DIY electronic parts like this so I can pay with cash to escape
suspected foreign state surveillance.

 _Imagine a younger, ambitious, slightly politically sensitive you from the
past, expressed a common consensus held by a specific group of like minded
peers who believed that a certain country Brad Pitt made famous in the 90s
should be free to exercise their political, religious and cultural will
against an aggressor state, those things suddenly attract the wrath of peers
from that said aggressor state, who think very differently from us, things
escalated and I 'm still to this day freaked out and feel tense when I hear
people speaking the official language of said aggressor state. Call me
disturbed, paranoid, I don't care, you weren't there man, you weren't there
when the Charlies flanked us and got embassy involved. What is this...People's
Republic of Vancouver?_

~~~
patrickyeon
Pretty near all of this stuff is available from North American distributors,
Adafruit/Sparkfun for more hobbyist-minded stuff, Digikey/Mouser/Newark for
industry. Adafruit takes bitcoin if you're that paranoid.

You're going to have a hard time getting along in the current world,
especially in electronics, if anything Chinese sets you on edge though. I'm
trying to be gentle, and I know you didn't ask for advice, but consider some
counseling if you're "freaked out and feel tense when [you] hear Chinese
people talking in Mandarin". Sounds like you're dealing with some history that
you could afford to talk to somebody about.

~~~
scrape_it
I am considering laying off the ganja for a while. but I need it to meet
deadlines, to do the work the market demands at the best possible time to the
best possible consumer, I am the invisible hand that keeps pushing me, in this
struggling and character building times. thanks for the advice 친구!

~~~
dkersten
I know unsolicited advise is often not appreciated (for good reason
sometimes), but perhaps you need to work on a better work-life balance. If you
need weed to get through the day and meet tight deadlines, perhaps you need a
less stressful role. Personally, I've cut back on the hours I work for this
reason. Sure, I earn a lot less, but I'm much less stressed, happier and am
starting to get my life (physical, mental and social health) in order.

PS: I buy most of my electronics from mouser or if its a hobbyist pre-
assembled item, sparkfun/adafruit. I am just a hobbyist, though.

In any case, good luck.

------
ahirjay3979
How to use this

~~~
benj111
What do you mean?

It's a comparison of a load of cheap micro controllers. How do you expect to
use it?

