ATmega4809 Curiosity Nano

[DrG]

So, I trust that many here get the emails from Microchip concerning their monthly sales. This month, one of the sale items is their ATmega4809 board on sale for US$7.50.

This reminded me that I bought a couple the last time that they were on sale. I can't help myself sometimes. I like boards. Especially when they are cheap and interesting.

I really have done very little with it...so far. One thing I did do was to load the Arduino Core that this fellow has written. It is really quite cool. Turns it into a familiar Arduino and programmed with the familiar Arduino IDE. It is a work in progress, but it is up and running.

Why bother with a $7.50 Arduino board when you can get "real" clones for $2? Well, I am not going to try to sell that case, but note that it is a 20MHz board. In fact, you can program the board clock speed (1-20Mhz). (at compile time, I don't know about inside of a program, but I might have remembered some of that messing around with it in MPLABXIDE - maybe not).

I also have not done a side-by-side comparison, but the 4809 does seem to have a lot of I/O and 3 UARTS. The board has a debugger and some other interesting features....could be useful.

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

This reminded me that I bought a couple the last time that they were on sale. I can't help myself sometimes. I like boards. Especially when they are cheap and interesting.
I really have done very little with it...so far.

Must admit, I bought a couple last time they were on sale (I couldn't help it either!), I haven't done anything with them yet as well.

 

[gophert]

I'd like to see Microchip's market research department doing customer & market segmentation.

Industrial applications w%
Consumer applications x%
Medical device applications y%
DIY/Maker z%
- of that...
- 1% will actually use them
- 99% will buy it because of the word "sale" and leave on shelf.

 

[DrG]

I'd like to see Microchip's market research department doing customer & market segmentation.

Industrial applications w%
Consumer applications x%
Medical device applications y%
DIY/Maker z%
- of that...
- 1% will actually use them
- 99% will buy it because of the word "sale" and leave on shelf.

I would like to see it also. It seems like, in the case of these "curiosity" boards", that they are simply trying to provide support tools for a processor - but they approach hobbyist boards. I don't mind the approach at all as it works to my benefit. Maybe they looked at the Arduino UNO and thought, boy that was a good way to get people interested in the ATMega 328.

What is interesting to me is that these "breakout processor boards" can be so much cheaper than the analogous ones for sensors.

For example https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/ams-CMOSIS/AS7026GG-EVALKIT?qs=uwxL4vQweFOyl5U71pfm%2BA==
The sensor is ~$9 and the evaluation board, $237. On the other hand, it is not at all uncommon to find boards that cost much less than the chip, like this one **broken link removed**

We do live in interesting times.