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 **broken link removed** 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
**broken link removed**
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;
**broken link removed**
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