Microcontroller Choice

[RacerX]

8051     

[miguelvp]

My new favorite is the PSoC 5LP, $10 for the prototype board:

http://www.cypress.com/?rid=108038

Cortex M3 so no DSP and floating point like some Cortex M4s but I can make it drive a CGA and a VGA monitor  , mostly by hardware (programmable digital blocks) so the actual MCU is mostly idle and I haven't even touched the Analog blocks yet.

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/make-use-of-an-old-cga-monitor/45/

Still working on the communication part to change the video modes and deciding if I want to use UART, SPI, I2C, HID or even MIDI to control and change what it's displayed.

I'm not even at 20% total usage of the chip in most assets.

Edit: for the 8051 aficionados the PSoC 3 uses that as the core.

[Kjelt]

All info thus far has numerous times been shared on this forum before. If you use the search option you.ll find a ton of info to go through and you can make your questions more specific.

[Tandy]

so is this the best neucleo to start with?

Here is how I would suggest you choose the right Nucleo Board.

1. Decide if you are happy with the regular STM32F type processor or are planning on ultra low power designs such as items that will need to run for a very long time on a small battery. If you need the low power option choose between...

NUCLEO-L053R8, Low end M0+ based controller with 64K flash. You have the option of developing on this with the option of using a small LQFP32 version in your own projects if you are looking for one with a small number of pins.

NUCLEO-L152RE, Higher end M4 based with flash options up-to 512K. If your projects are going to be somewhat more demanding and you need the extra clock speed, flash & peripherals then this would be the better choice.

2. If you are happy with the regular F series then decide what family you would like to work with, some suggested options.

NUCLEO-F030R8 This is based on the older M0 core but has package options all the way down to a TSSOP 20 that makes hand soldering simple and allows you to use it as a cost effective replacement for an 8bit processor starting at about US $1 in small quantities.

NUCLEO-F303RE Similar to the above but using the newer M4 core, higher clock speed and more peripherals including D to A and op-amps. Being a higher spec microcontroller there is no TSSOP option but there is a LQFP32, obviously these are a bit more expensive than the F03 range.

NUCLEO-F411RE If you want something with all the bells and whistles as well as high performance and plenty of flash then this is the board to get. However it many not be the best place to start.

M0 & M4 based chips seem to be the sweet spot in the sense that they established with good support in the software tools etc

[Psi]

STM32 + emBlocks IDE  works well. (it uses gcc)

and the STM32 discovery boards are pretty cheap, like $10, and are supported out of the box by emBlocks.
The discovery boards also have a debugger on board, which is also supported by emBlocks. The debugger can be cut away from the main MCU half of the PCB and used as a debugger/programmer on its own.

There's a good range of STM32 too.
From the STM32F0, which is quite cheap (like $2 in one-off) and kicks the pants off a 8bit ATMega or PIC

To the jaw dropping STM32F7 which has more power/features than you will know what to do with. (Reading the datasheet may make you week in the knees)

[macboy]

My new favorite is the PSoC 5LP, $10 for the prototype board:

http://www.cypress.com/?rid=108038

Cortex M3 so no DSP and floating point like some Cortex M4s but I can make it drive a CGA and a VGA monitor  , mostly by hardware (programmable digital blocks) so the actual MCU is mostly idle and I haven't even touched the Analog blocks yet.

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/make-use-of-an-old-cga-monitor/45/

Still working on the communication part to change the video modes and deciding if I want to use UART, SPI, I2C, HID or even MIDI to control and change what it's displayed.

I'm not even at 20% total usage of the chip in most assets.

Edit: for the 8051 aficionados the PSoC 3 uses that as the core.

I've seen this one too and I plan to pick up a couple of those nice dev boards. The economy of those dev boards is high. You get a "free" USB programmer/debugger that can also do UART/I2C comms with your project, plus all I/O is broken out into a DIP compatible format. And it's just $10 including the PSOC5 that by itself normally costs twice that much. That's not to mention the additional lesser PSOC5 on the programmer/debugger side of the board. Figure that one out.

The similar PSOC4 dev kits are also a good deal at $4 even though that micro is only ~$1 itself.