Microcontroller for robotic path planning

[infinity]

Hi!
I am making a robot that can plan its path. I am using Sharp GP2D12 for obstacle detection and ranging. Now I need to use a suitable microcontroller with an 8-bit ADC, Stepper motor driver circuit ,4-8K program memory and atleast 2 I/O ports. The price should be minimum. Can u suggest which microcontroller I can use? It needn't have any advanced features!

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

Hi!
I am making a robot that can plan its path. I am using Sharp GP2D12 for obstacle detection and ranging. Now I need to use a suitable microcontroller with an 8-bit ADC, Stepper motor driver circuit ,4-8K program memory and atleast 2 I/O ports. The price should be minimum. Can u suggest which microcontroller I can use? It needn't have any advanced features!

PIC's are the most popular micro-controllers, they are cheap to buy, easy to program, with programmers and software freely available.

Your 4-8K memory requirement looks rather excessive, 1K should be more than enough with a PIC.

PIC's range from 8 pin to 40 pin, you just need to pick a suitable sized one, I would suggest you use a FLASH one (for ease of reprogramming), a suitable 18 pin one would be the 16F819, or a 28 pin one the 16F876. These both include 10 bit A2D, which should be fine for your requirements, you can easily configure it as 8 bit if required (by reading just the 8 most significant bits).