Due to the MCU part nofindum crisis of the prev. two years I had to make do with parts on hand.
I decided to spend a few days building a 2x9V plus 4x roundcell NiMH cell charger/analyzer in my spare time, but failed to have on hand a single MCU that could handle the number of I/O, A2D, PWM, User GUI required.
So, I built a chimera of three MCU's working together. One Infineon 5V PSOC4200 ARM (>40 I/O if not using 16-chan 12-bit A2D) stamp for PWM and charging, One 16F 28-pin PIC for monitoring cell temperature, and finally a 40-pin 18F PIC for GUI to achieve a ticker tape 7-digit x 7-seg Bubba Mplx'd LED display and also deal with the many button switches, 10-status LEDs, and 9V charging status. All three chips communicate with each other using RS-232 links with the 40-pin 64mHz PIC18F45K22 being the Master.
I finished this task in free-time over a month or so and now it works 100%, works exactly as I wanted, but I would like to try to first use a approx 100-pin or so single MCU to handle the job to(but also now 8 round cells +2x 9V)eliminate the communication problem and simplify any debug/modify pgm process.
My Analyzer device will:
1) measure/setup/change/display charge mAH, Discharge mAH, charging temperature rise/limit, charge time, also meas. cell internal Res. Also want to have a two way charge status indication, test cells. For charge, monitor voltage, current, temperature of each of the 8-roundcells. 9V rect. bats are easy to charge and analyze when charging is accomplished slowly.
2)Develop a simple(maybe just same multi-7-seg LED) display, quick view status LEDs plus use a multi-touch sw. GUI.
I know nothing about working with STM or NTX MCUs, but maybe a dirt cheap dev. board(stamp?) on Alibaba that fit the bill. It will be a small challenge just to make a decision to select the best chip and a greater challenge to learn how use the tool chain.
3)I find it so easy to work with PDIP 5V Vdd MCU's, have no experience on how to migrate to 3.6V max Vdd MCU's.
What is the best/easy way:
1)Trying to work with PIC's pay for use compilers and just use a PIC32 chip?
2)Spend months learning how to be able to understand how to competitively choose and use (very different from PIC's) STM or NXP tool chains to config a STM or NXP chip?