Modern alternatives to ATMega328P and ATMega2560

[riccardo]

Hello,

I've used the 328P and 2560 for years due to their use in Arduino and therefore lots of libraries and support available.

I was wondering if there's something better I could move on to using that takes advantage of some tech improvements but without going into very large pin counts or BGA soldering.

Significantly higher clock speeds would be my main desire as this often limits what I can do. I presume such devices will also be in 32-bit chips rather than the 8-bit ones I mentioned.

Does anyone have any recommendations?

 

[Pommie]

Have a look at esp8266 (wemos) and esp32 based boards. Very cheap, powerful and use the Arduino IDE.

Mike.
Edit, I like the Wemos mini and have one running a server serving up html pages.

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

You might also look at the STM 'Blue pill' boards which are a lot faster than the Arduino boards as well, and dirt cheap.

 

[upand_at_them]

What "tech improvements" are you referring to? I believe that chip was designed to be optimized for C programming and has many more assembly instructions that most PIC's.

And what clock speed do you need?

Microchip - the now-owner of Atmel - has a parametric part selector on their website.

 

[Pommie]

I've found the ESP and STM boards to be very flexible and easy to program. I think microchip did themselves a great disservice when they went down the configurator route. I personally hate the configurator but there is no alternative, it produces incomprehensible code but I still have to go through it and pick out the bits I need, so complex are the new pic chips. I'll still use pics for some projects but I'm slowly moving away.

Mike.

 

[riccardo]

Thank you all. Sorry for coming back so late. My main interest in features would be speed, fast/high resolution timers (for input capture) and good ADCs. It should be an IC to put on my own boards rather than a little module though if both are available it will typically be better for finding support and examples.

I also want something I can get easily from reputable suppliers like Farnell in the UK or maybe Mouser.

I have seen the SAMD51 series seems to suit my needs and there is also a dev board from Sparkfun I can practice with. I am wondering though about the clock speed and how you run it at 120MHz. I can see in the Sparkfun schematic they use a 32.768kHz crystal oscillator. I am guessing that " 48 MHz Digital Frequency Locked Loop (DFLL48M)" and " Two 48-200 MHz Fractional Digital Phased Locked Loop (FDPLL200M)" are something I can configure in the code or scaling up the clock frequency.

I usually use Atmel Studio for programming so would like to keep using this if possible. I mention Arduino, not for IDE, but for availability of libraries and example code as it helps a lot to make one off devices and interface with common parts like displays, encoders and so on.

Does this ATSAMD51J20 seem like a good choice?

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

Thank you all. Sorry for coming back so late. My main interest in features would be speed, fast/high resolution timers (for input capture) and good ADCs. It should be an IC to put on my own boards rather than a little module though if both are available it will typically be better for finding support and examples.

I also want something I can get easily from reputable suppliers like Farnell in the UK or maybe Mouser.

I have seen the SAMD51 series seems to suit my needs and there is also a dev board from Sparkfun I can practice with. I am wondering though about the clock speed and how you run it at 120MHz. I can see in the Sparkfun schematic they use a 32.768kHz crystal oscillator.

That's simply for the RTC (Real Time Clock), and presumably can run at low power during sleep?.

I am guessing that " 48 MHz Digital Frequency Locked Loop (DFLL48M)" and " Two 48-200 MHz Fractional Digital Phased Locked Loop (FDPLL200M)" are something I can configure in the code or scaling up the clock frequency.

I would imagine so - as you use Atmel Studio there are simple configuration options, so you can easily check.

 

[Ian Rogers]

The Arduino Due is the "natural" progression as it is the latest Arduino board... But there are literally loads now..

All the libraries will more likely work with the Due than any other.. Seeing as it's the exact same price as the mega, it seems they would like people to progress to that board.