Re: uC selection

Jon Slaughter wrote:

I'm looking at TI's chips right now and trying to see how consistent the
chips are. I am not doing any advanced uC system's yet(just adc and pwm
stuff ATM) but eventually I'd like to get into dsp(audio processing) and
other stuff. I don't want to have to learn a new chip every time I move to a
new application or be limited by the architecture. PIC's seem more like
entry level more than anything else and I feel like the time invested in
learning them might not pay off in the long run.

I've used the PIC18F252 in a commercial product, which is still selling.
This chip provides a lot more than "entry level" chips.

The only reason I'm using pic's now is cause of how easy was to get started
and the majority of it was free/low cost(tools, chips, programmer, etc...).

Take a look at some 8051 chips. I like the architecture much more than the
PIC architecture and there are lots of companies who produces 8051
compatible chips. A nice website for searching for microcontrollers is this
site:

http://www.keil.com/dd/search_parm.asp

The right microcontroller depends on many things. First define your
requirements (technical requirements, like low power, required interfaces,
ADC/DAC etc. and other requirements, like produced by multiple companies,
like some 8051 chips, free development tools, price etc.) and then choose
the chip which meets all requirements. Hobbyist requirements may be other
than commercial requirements (e.g. for most commercial projects it doesn't
matter to buy a good IDE and compiler).

If you just want to play a bit with a new architecture, Silicon
Laboratories has some nice chips and development boards. I've bought one
for evaluating the 8051 architecture:

http://www.frank-buss.de/LabViewSilabsTest/

--
Frank Buss, fb@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.frank-buss.de, http://www.it4-systems.de
.

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