Thanks for the link, I had to pick my jaw up off the ground after doing some 'comparison' cost checks...

Have you ordered off these guys before? Do they list in $US ?

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They have not done me wrong yet. (About 4 or 5 orders)
They are in the US.
They ship 2nd day UPS at the same price a UPS ground.

The only down side is that there web site is slow (go figure).

These people do a very good job of packaging the products. I ordered 1/8 watt resistors and each value came in a foam padded 8x11 mailer or cardboard box with form inserts. I am thinking the packaging cost several times what I paid for the resistors.

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BCHS/3v0's Tutorials
Junebug USB PIC programmer kit., USB Bit Whacker,
The 15 Minute Printed Circuit Board! (+drill time)

 

Their range isn’t as exhaustive (good in some ways) compared to digikey

The search features are just simply excellent - its like Digikeys search features, but with single IC's selling for 1000 quantity prices

Their prices on IC's is unbelievable, but futurlec beat them hands down for hardware etc.. That’s after a quick look though (Futurlec can take up to 1-2months on an order... not exactly for time sensitive projects)

The price gap on IC's is so large, I'll be doing split orders for sure now

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I split my orders between Newark and Mouser. I have found Mouser to be less expensive then DigiKey. Also if you ever need just a few parts quick Mouser does not have a min order.

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BCHS/3v0's Tutorials
Junebug USB PIC programmer kit., USB Bit Whacker,
The 15 Minute Printed Circuit Board! (+drill time)

 

After using PICs for several years, I decided to try an ATMega644P. This is 20MHz, 64K FLASH, several KB of RAM, and good I/O pin current supply (sink and source). After monitoring Microchip for a year it appears they will never produce the DIP40, 5V part I want: more than 16K FLASH, more than 1K RAM, with two USARTs. I build an occasional test bed at work. Two of these would have benefitted greatly with a second hardware serial port. I downloaded the free version of BASCOM-AVR (limited to 4k RAM of code) and purchased an Olimex AVR proto board from Sparkfun for about $16. I'm not giving up PICs any time soon, though.

Thanks for the tip on Newark.
kenjj

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All my pencils *used* to have erasers!

 

I need to make an order from Newark. I didn't realize their prices were so good on MCU's. I wonder what their shipping is to Canada.

For an alternative, you guys might want to look at the Luminary Micro (now Texas Instruments) stuff.

LM3S1608 50Mhz Cortex-M3 32bit
128k flash - 32k ram
ADC - I2C - SPI - UARTS
$4.65

or

LM3S811 50Mhz Cortex-M3 32bit
64k flash - 8k ram
ADC - I2C - SPI - UARTS
$3.70


For a pure price/performance comparison it's pretty nice.

I've only used the LM3S811 so far and it's very "8bit like", actually a little too 8bit like for my preference.

EDIT: Sorry, no DIP parts, though.

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Mark Higgins

 

Hmm... Unfortunately Newark doesn't give you a shipping price at check-out. That kinda kills it for me. I don't want to make an experimental order to see how much it's going to cost.

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Mark Higgins

 

I hate to say this but I was on this forum over a year ago looking to get into PIC's. But there was not a centralized location for information for bigginers. Don't get me wrong but this place I'm sure is great for trouble shooting with PICs. I got into AVR's early in the summer and have been loving it ever since. I am ALWAYS on avrfreaks.net and #avr on freenode. With about over at least 120 active people on the IRC channel at a time it is extremely easy to get your problem resolved in a matter of time. And Avr Freaks forum is HUGE. There is a very large tutorial section and many many projects.

You can get a AVRISP MKii for 35 bucks for a full usb programmer. And for 50 you can get a Dragon which does almost everything. And the good 'ole stk500 is around 70 bucks.

This again is from the point of view of a 15 year old. I am no 'wizz at 'uC's....(yet. lol).
I just do electrics for fun and learn what I can on my own.




Also I've noticed that many many many people have been steering people away from avr's on this forum and telling new users that they should use PIC's (obliviously not in those exact words).

Both MPLab And AVR Studio are free which is great.
As for pricing you can get a 8 pin DIP avr with 1k of flash and 6 IO's and A/D converter, running at 20MHz (so 20 MIPs). for $1.40 (The attiny13)

and the very popular attiny2313 with 2K of flash and 18 IO's running at 20MHz for $2.20 in small quantity.

I am sure I will work with PIC's in the future. Just to try a new platform and test the waters.

Well my 2 cents have been given...

 

Microcontroller performance is not always relevant.

Most applications I make would perform just as well with a PIC/AVR or whatever. So microcontroller choice comes down to;
* cheaper
* easier to obtain
* already having stocks
* versatility, (ie stock one part, use them for lots of stuff)
* ease of development (this is really = experience with that particular part)
* quality of support and info available for that part

I stock PIC 16F and 18F and rarely bother using my 18F parts because for most stuff I can squeeze enough performance from the cheaper 16F parts of which I keep more stocks and will replace those stocks cheaper.

If you are going to make 50 microcontroller gizmo's in a year do you need 50 micros with the most MIPS or 50 micros that are versatile enough and pretty cheap?

 

The question only appears to make sense. Everyting depends upon best for what. Member of the forum will go on and on each answering their version of what the question means. Answers may differ, but all may be correct.

For example: Microcontrollers for Beginners - Open Circuits

 

Wow, I was still subscribed to this thread from my last post in 2007! May as well join in now that I've come this far

Hi davidbball,

The PIC vs AVR topic is always a hot one to say the least, and there is quite a following for PIC's here at electro-tech. It's not a good thing, nor a bad thing, just that the diversity is slightly biased to a particular product range.

A contributing factor to the bias might just be how popular PIC's are, and how much they are accepted by the tech community. Last year some time, Microchip released a statement that they had shipped their 6 billionth micro-controller. If that isn't an example of how widely popular and used they are, then I don't know what is

My overall decision on which mcu came down to the compiler, and Swordfish is arguably the best structured compiler out there - though is designed for use with the 18F family of PIC's (There has been plenty of talk about 24F and dsPIC support in the future).

Microchip offer sample ordering which costs a flat rate of $7.50 (unless your a valued customer ). You can get up to 6 devices, bringing the cost down to $1.25/chip. Also, a full USB programmer with built in UART Tool, Logic Analyser and ICD for the PIC's can be brought for $35 from microchip


Another point I want to share here is that the 16F and 18F devices are, in terms of technological advances, becoming obsolete. If ATMEL owned the 16F/18F range, they would all have been discontinued alas two or three individual "high-end" popular models. The 24F and dsPIC's are where the comparison should lie with the newer AVR power packages, as they are much closer together on the time scale of production. Further on that point, Microchip has and will not discontinue a product line, hence the overwhelming continual use of the dreaded 16F PIC devices and all of their deficiencies/drawbacks.

A common mistake for many people I see on threads like this is to profile PIC Micro's around there experience with 16F devices, then compare it to AVR's. An image comes to mind;


Anyway, enough ramble out PIC's (see how easy it is to support something you know!!!). AVR's do have some REALLY good aspects. As a RISC and Harvard architecture device, ATMEL are much cleaner by design. Vectored interrupts, Flat memory model (no banking), Software Stack management, True indexing and indirect access and the instructions are executed in one cycle. There's really no excuse for AVR to not have a compiler on par with Swordfish...

All that said, use what works/available/your level of skill, and you will find support in any case. With no bias toward ANY mcu type, there's nothing quite like the feeling of programming your first device and watching that LED flash or "Hello World" displayed on an LCD/UART Tool.

The competitive nature between ATMEL and Microchip will only result in better products for us, the end users. So by all means, use AVR's if you love em, and use PIC's if you prefer

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digital-diy.com - Hobby microcontroller projects and tutorials. Assembly, PICBasic and C examples.

 

Succinctly put Gramo. I'd add more, but you pretty much said all that needs to be said.

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Comparison of what? This is like arguing whether Lamborghini or Ferrari is best when 99% of drivers just need a decent functioning Chevy to get to work, (and the drivers asking the question are beginner drivers).

Have a look on the forum at all the people's requests for help with their microcontroller projects, especially newbies to micros. Just about every project can be made perfectly well with a lowly old PIC 16F, and there is tons of source code and project examples that they can use, and a 16F datasheet is much easier for a beginner to get to grips with than a 24F.

This whole bigger/faster/better argument is just lame. What percentage of the projects you make actually NEED a 24F or equivalent?? It's a very rare situation where only some pros and power-users NEED a top end micro and they are the exact people who DON'T need to ask which micro is best.

 

Hi Mr RB! Bare with me though your comment strays me away from the OP's direction

I wouldn't recommend direct entry to 24F micro controllers either, especially given the limited support by higher language compilers, though their day will come.

Perhaps the 18F range would be more suitable rather then the 16F devices. They offer a more conventional approach to programming/development over the 16F's and all of their flaws. The net is still littered with examples of 18F PIC's, but naturally doesn't have the 20+ years exposure time of the 16C/F range.

That opinion is coming from my 16F hobbyist experiences. I now use 18F PIC's, love them. I honestly have not had the need for more capability out of them. I guess it was to my own peril that I started off with the 16F84 thinking it would be *easier* and focused toward beginners given its exposure and ?acceptance? by the tech community...

For sure it is, my comment was focused toward those conversions where beginners with 16F's jump ship to a high end ATMEL product. The result is usually a profiled experience of the 16F range which associates all PIC's to a world of confusion and underpowered capability.

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Hi gramo, you've made some good points there. I agree that a 16F84 is getting a bit obsolete now, and 18F PICs can be a good entry point for beginners too. But the 16F still have their place.

Its like the fact that transistors didn't become obsolete just because we have opamps now. There's still times when the small size/cost/simplicity makes a transistor best for the job. I just don't see 16F becoming obsolete any time soon, they are still cheaper for many low end applications and there is a 20 year resource of code out there for people to benefit from.

I'm not entirely happy with the direction of the new high end PICs. There's only so much math capability you need on a microcontroller. A "high end" PIC to me would be something with a fast 12bit ADC on each port pin, not just switching one 10-bit ADC between pins. Or some DACs!! What about an 8pin PIC with multiple 12bit ADCs, 12bit DACs, and some 24 or 32bit timers?? Now THAT would be a step forward, instead of focusing on huge ram and MIPS and math modules. Not everyone wants to make MP3 decoders.