What's your jellybean microcontroller?

[westfw]

It used to be PIC12F675 or ATtiny11, but I think these days it might be ATmega8/etc.  (why yes, it might be a reasonable tradeoff to pay an extra $1 for 8x or $2 for 32x the memory...)

[Psi]

attinys are pretty cheap but there isnt much difference between atmega and budget arm chips

[MrAureliusR]

I like how people have mentioned some of the ATtinys, the 841, 861A, 2313A and 13A are my favourites. I've been using the ATtiny13A for a long time. 8 pins, but very flexible. It's a bonus that the ATtiny85 is a pin-for-pin drop-in replacement with more memory and more peripherals. So if you start a design with the 13A but run out of program space or need a different serial protocol you can just pop in the 85 and switch the software to that chip and bingo, you're off and running.

However my new jellybean micro is quickly becoming the TI Tiva C TM4C129XNCZAD. It's pretty much brand new (less than a year old), costs like $22 in one-offs, but man this thing is awesome! The datasheet is over 2200 pages long and the API library is almost a thousand pages long as well. I've never used an ARM before but man, I am totally in love with this micro. I have it on the DK-TM4C129X Connected Development Kit from TI. Has on-board ethernet, SD card, 64MB flash chip, USB host/device/OTG, separate USB ICDI, 3.5" TFT touchscreen interface, speaker with LM4819 amp, a gazillion pin headers to break out many of the 212 pins on the BGA, the BoosterPack connectors that TI uses (both regular and XL)... I mean the features just go on and on. I literally haven't even come close to listing them all. I know the board is expensive but if you're considering using Tiva micros it's a great bargain. The Tiva C LaunchPad is like $25 or something and it has all the same features, you just have to add the hardware yourself.

I am really starting to love the TI stuff!

[Full Disclosure: I was recently hired to write about TI microcontrollers and the LaunchPad/BoosterPack system, but being completely honest I really liked the system before I was hired -- which is part of the reason they contacted me I think. However I'm still an AVR guy at heart, I love my Atmel chips! I'm not trying to push any agenda here, I just genuinely like their parts]

[c4757p]

However my new jellybean micro is quickly becoming the TI Tiva C TM4C129XNCZAD. It's pretty much brand new (less than a year old), costs like $22 in one-offs

Nice micro, but doesn't $22 kind of disqualify it from being a jellybean...?

[JoeN]

However my new jellybean micro is quickly becoming the TI Tiva C TM4C129XNCZAD. It's pretty much brand new (less than a year old), costs like $22 in one-offs

Nice micro, but doesn't $22 kind of disqualify it from being a jellybean...?

It's also a 212 ball BGA part still in preview.  Not sure how this qualifies as a jellybean at all.  But it looks like a nice part.  NO SAMPLES.   

[Skimask]

It's also a 212 ball BGA part still in preview.  Not sure how this qualifies as a jellybean at all.  But it looks like a nice part.  NO SAMPLES.   

And here we are soldering wires onto a BGA again 

[JoeN]

It's also a 212 ball BGA part still in preview.  Not sure how this qualifies as a jellybean at all.  But it looks like a nice part.  NO SAMPLES.   

And here we are soldering wires onto a BGA again 

Just to be fair (to me!), I never suggested that Atmel part was a jellybean part, only that it was ultra-small.  Yes, and an ultra-PITA.

[dannyf]

-However my new jellybean micro is quickly becoming the TI Tiva C TM4C129XNCZAD. -

I have to say that from a feature rich and ease of programming perspective, I love those to cm4 chips. Tons of peripherals and they are identical - reminds me of pic24.

on the flip side, they could have worked out the luminary bugs before releasing them as ti chips.

[dannyf]

What is and isn't cheap is highly subjective.

[jolshefsky]

I'll just chime in with the PIC12F683 as well, mostly because it's just what I started with. The PIC18F2550 is my go-to chip for when I need more pins/features. I stuck with Microchip because I since when I started using them, their stuff tends to work. I haven't done much fancy (e.g. graceful brownout detection and the like) but I got a handle on how to program them and built a bit of a C framework in with the relatively clunky C compiler from CCS. I originally started with PIC writing assembler but got tired of reinventing the wheel with each program. 

I've kind of avoided Arduino and Atmel's processors because I'm old and don't like new things, and Arduino has a bunch of stuff I don't need in every project. Plus my computer degree is from 1993, so I'm mostly just happy programming little 8-bit micros anyway.

...

tl;dr: personal preference.

[dannyf]

lus my computer degree is from 1993

1993? That makes you practically a baby.

[JoeN]

lus my computer degree is from 1993

1993? That makes you practically a baby.

Uh, yeah.  I went in 88-92 and we had 32 bit desktops by then (80386, though mostly running 16 bit software at the time) and did most of the real work on an Amdahl IBM compatible mainframe running MVS.  You shouldn't be considering yourself old yet unless you went in late.

[NiHaoMike]

I mostly use PICs, specifically the PIC24s and dsPICs. Then again, a lot of my projects use "high end" microcontrollers. For low end stuff, I really like the MSP430s and PIC16/PIC18, probably because I have a bunch of those lying around.

[lgbeno]

Usually msp430g2553 but lately I'm drawn to the Zero Gecko, they are inexpensive and seem packed with features.

[westfw]

my new jellybean micro is quickly becoming the TI Tiva C TM4C129XNCZAD.

I agree with the people who don't think that qualifies as a "jellybean."

OTOH, I could argue that today's high-end jellybeans are those low-cost BOARDS that abound.
Tiva Launchpad, Freescale Freedom, NXP LPCxpresso, ST Discovery, Beaglebone, Teensy3, Raspberry Pi...  Doesn't matter: pretty much any of those boards can be obtained quicker and cheaper than I can design, fab, and build anything in .65mm pitch or finer package.

[JoeN]

my new jellybean micro is quickly becoming the TI Tiva C TM4C129XNCZAD.

I agree with the people who don't think that qualifies as a "jellybean."

OTOH, I could argue that today's high-end jellybeans are those low-cost BOARDS that abound.
Tiva Launchpad, Freescale Freedom, NXP LPCxpresso, ST Discovery, Beaglebone, Teensy3, Raspberry Pi...  Doesn't matter: pretty much any of those boards can be obtained quicker and cheaper than I can design, fab, and build anything in .65mm pitch or finer package.

Sometimes that makes sense.  I used one of these on a recent project.  It's compact, a nice processor programmable directly by Arduino, and it has a USB connection on it.  A knockoff of Adafruit's Arduino Micro.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/400610628809

[dannyf]

A knockoff of Adafruit's Arduino Micro.

It didn't route out ADC0/1, missing a critical part of the adc module.

To me, you either get the real thing (with ADC0/1 routed out), or a pro mini.

[neslekkim]

The generic thing you can get anywhere. Like jellybeans.

Ah, now I understand what was meant
Because here in germany you find jelly beans
only in few stores in big cities.

And also very expensive here.. I thought it referred to small.

Yeah it doesn't translate well.

[jolshefsky]

I'll just chime in with the PIC12F683 as well, mostly because it's just what I started with ...

That seems to sum up a lot of people's experiences. They learnt on PICs so stick with them, despite all the suckyness.

Perhaps I missed an important point: I started with PICs, they worked perfectly fine, and I continue to use them because they do. If I had experienced "suckyness" I would have switched to a different processor immediately.

[dannyf]

If I had experienced "suckyness"

Absolutely. Every chip sucks in some regards - as long as we cannot produce a perfect chip.

Sucky engineers avoid chips with suckyness; Good engineers use chips with suckyness.

[jolshefsky]

my new jellybean micro is quickly becoming the TI Tiva C TM4C129XNCZAD.

I agree with the people who don't think that qualifies as a "jellybean."

I could argue that none of the processors can qualify as jellybean parts. One example is resistors (e.g. 1K SMD):

Qty	Unit	Total
1	US$0.08	US$0.08
10	US$0.048	US$0.48
100	US$0.027	US$2.70
1,000	US$0.018	US$18.00
5,000	US$0.005	US$25.00

But for even cheap microcontrollers, the price drop isn't much. My go-to 8-pin in an SMD, the PIC12F683 works out like this:

1	US$1.31	US$1.31
10	US$1.09	US$10.90
100	US$1.04	US$104.00

One might consider the LM555 a "jellybean" part, so it works out like this:

Qty	Unit	Total
1	US$0.44	US$0.44
10	US$0.291	US$2.91
100	US$0.162	US$16.20
1,000	US$0.109	US$109.00
10,000	US$0.095	US$950.00
100,000	US$0.081	US$8,100.00

There's no perfect formula here, but if you buy 5,000 resistors, the price drops to 1/16th if bought in single units, 10,000 LM555's cost nearly 1/5th the unit price each, but the PIC12F683 only drops to 79% its unit value when purchased in quantity.

I'd say for a part to be "jellybean" it should probably cost less than, say US$1 in high quantities, AND the high-quantity price should be less than half its unit price.

But for the sake of argument, "jellybean" could also mean "parts you keep track of as a pile rather than as individual units." If you have a pile of resistors, you don't worry if you drop one or fry one—like if you had a pile of jellybeans, you wouldn't really miss one (until it's the last one ). Compare that to, say, 10 DC-DC converters where each one might cost US$25, and if you fry one, it's more than just a nuisance.

[Kjelt]

mine STM8S207, found a small reel of them in the container. So no charge of costs except that I am kinda dependent on the compiler of my work (no free ones around that unlimited time support 32k/64k) which is quite unfortunately.

[dannyf]

mine STM8S207, found a small reel of them in the container.

Good chip, nicer find.

[Lunasix]

For me : PIC32MXxxx (120 to 695), and in rare cases PIC10 in sot23 or PIC12 in SO8, when very small package is needed, and for very small program. I will never use a PIC16 or PIC18 when a PIC32 gives much more for a price not really different.