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This won't be cheap in practice.

These are 10-cents to 70-cent SMT parts. See the link from the blogpost: https://www.lcsc.com/products/Microcontroller-Units-MCUs-MPU...

This means you need a hotair rework station and soldering iron. If you want to breadboard, you'll want a set of breakout boards to place these parts.

I suggest to beginners: work with DIP instead, so that it works on your breadboard without the need of more expensive tools. I remember back when I was in college, all I could afford was a breadboard and some chips (not even a soldering iron: too expensive for my cheap self back then).

Similarly, I expect today's cheap beginners to start on DIP + breadboards, and _maybe_ get a soldering iron, eventually. SMT parts are just outside of the reach for such cheap EEs, which is fine, DIP parts (though lower performance), still exist and still have a huge variety of important projects you can do. (OpAmps, Transistors like 2N2222 and 2N7000, voltage regulators, current regulators, references, even uCs like AVR64DD28)

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Spending $0.70 on parts you literally can't use is a waste of your time and money. Buying custom pcbs is like $100 for single runs. Buying breakout boards is +$3 each plus the additional tools (hot air rework) needed to work with them.

Spending $3 on a 28-DIP package (like AVR64DD28) is in fact, the cheapest way to enter this hobby. Or alternatively, find other DIP packages (maybe something else exists: I'm not very familiar with these cheaper Chinese parts), but not the parts discussed in this particular blogpost.




>Buying custom pcbs is like $100 for single runs.

You can easily get small custom PCBs for <$10, delivered.

There's a really good price comparison site at https://pcbshopper.com/

5 boards - 5cm x 5cm, 2 layer, delivered for US$9.90.




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