16/32 Bit Micro's

Im curious to know what everyone's thought is on 16/32 Bit microcontrollers in the embedded world (ie Like PIC). As a Hobbyist, 8 Bit seems Fine enough, but 16 Bit is becoming cheaper than 8 in some cases. I cant seem to figure out a use for 16/32 bit Micro's in the hobby realm, as they have most of the peripherals that 8 bit has, just with more performance.

I have the Microstick II that I have been "dabbling" with, which came with a 32 Bit Micro in a DIP package! I wonder if 32 Bit Micro's can handle Floating Point Data...

With the release of 32 micro's we have opened up the world of colour touch and fast mathematical calculations..

I will be porting my gear over to the latest pic32 as soon as I can... 8 bits are good but imagine the 8+k of linear ram.... The pic18 maxed out at nearly 4k.... Cheaper better faster... what's stopping you...

All dev boards are mega cheap.... I can pick up a chipkit uno for £17..... say no more...

I use 32-bit micros almost exclusively for my hobby use. 99% of the time it is for colour LCD's with touch screens, as Ian said. I usually use them for the speed and large amount of RAM. Of course if it is something small and simple then I would go for a more appropriate micro.

At the moment my favourite is the STM32F4 range which has up to 2MB of code space, up to 256kB of RAM, inbuilt SRAM/LCD/NAND/NOR controller, and a single-cycle floating point unit.

I usually make up my own 'development board' with the touch screen LCD and then use it for things such as calculating and displaying a Julia Set, or a rotating 3D cube, or Conways Game of Life, or any other exercises I find fun.

These things you wouldn't really be able to do with an 8-bit micro.

Just for example type in STM32F4 discovery into youtube and have a look. There are people making MP3 players, video players, sega and nintendo emulators, very basic DSO's etc.

Ian, Did you have any trouble with Code? I use Swordfish SE for my 8 bit parts, which make extensive use of libraries (Which is nice!), but it seems that XC8/16/32 also have libraries for ADC/LCD/UART/etc, but finding documentation seems to be hard.

Ive seen some of the STM boards, and they are very price competitive. The only problem is I would have to relearn a new language.

32-bit controllers are practically micro-computers, actually more capable than computers of 90-s. The programming style is different. There are lots of libraries, which do quite complicated things - graphical displays, touch screen, USB, Internet, WiFi become really easy. You can start running a Web server on your chip within minutes.

They also have DMA, built-in hardware modules, so it's easy to do standard microcontroller stuff, such as UART, SPI, I2C,ADC etc.

Prices are going down too.

I don't think that 8-bit microcontrollers are going to hold up for much longer. For some reason, it makes me sad

Overclocked said:

Ian, Did you have any trouble with Code? I use Swordfish SE for my 8 bit parts, which make extensive use of libraries (Which is nice!), but it seems that XC8/16/32 also have libraries for ADC/LCD/UART/etc, but finding documentation seems to be hard.

Ive seen some of the STM boards, and they are very price competitive. The only problem is I would have to relearn a new language.

Click to expand...

I use C.... I have mikroC for pic32..... If you are a fan of swordfish then buy a chipkit uno and download Davids Firewing basic compiler https://www.firewing.info/pmwiki.php?n=Firewing.Library

You can program it in Basic..

Ian Rogers said:

I use C.... I have mikroC for pic32..... If you are a fan of swordfish then buy a chipkit uno and download Davids Firewing basic compiler https://www.firewing.info/pmwiki.php?n=Firewing.Library

You can program it in Basic..

Click to expand...

Ive been watching Firewing, but it only supports one processor. I suppose thats all you really need, but I like the ability to use other PICs if needed.

NorthGuy said:

I don't think that 8-bit microcontrollers are going to hold up for much longer. For some reason, it makes me sad

Click to expand...

Don't worry, the classic 8 bit controller market is actually growing to handle all the little tasks its 32 bit brothers have decided are beneath its awesome capabilities.

**broken link removed**

Overclocked said:

Ive been watching Firewing, but it only supports one processor

Click to expand...

You can add support to Firewing for pretty much any PIC18, PIC24, PIC33 or PIC32 using the free Microchip XC compilers

Im Back From Maker Faire today. I "caved" in and bought a TI launch pad (MSP430FR5969RGZ). From the get-go (as I write this, Im just plugging it in and doing research) there seems to be ALOT more tools available, and a much bigger community built around this thing than say The PICs I have. I noticed today that there were a lot more projects that used the TI launch Pad, rather than the arduino projects Ive seen in the past (which is fine, That Rant is for another day). I also saw Freescale there, which was interesting. There were of course, a lot of raspi projects as well, some simple and some complex.

Im gonna give this a shot and see what I can come up with.

ADD: I also forgot that Mikroelectronica has a basic like language for PIC32. The code Limit is to 8kb, which I think would be more than enough.