Suitable chip for simple measurement / control

[Sigmoid]

Hey
I'm looking at building a simple regulated power supply, with an LED or LCD display for measured voltage, current, and load resistance / wattage.
What would be the best microcontroller to use for doing the measurements (needs to have a reasonably good ADC), driving the display, perform control functions (drive power MOSFETs, etc.)...

...oh and it should be as cheap as possible. XD I could put a whole Arduino in there, but I'd feel stupid doing that.

I wonder, which controller did David use in his USB power supply?

[Christopher]

microchip PICs are pretty nice, use their MAPS to find a nice (8 bit?) processor with the amount of I/Os etc you need.

Or just use a custom pcb with an atmega328 and shove arduino bootloader on there and shabam !

[AndyC_772]

In terms of capability per unit cost, you could do a lot worse than one of the small STM32 ARM microcontrollers. Even if you don't need the performance, comparing roughly like-for-like in terms of I/O count and peripheral set, they're actually cheaper than 8-bit PICs.

[Short Circuit]

You will be making one simple power supply. So what does it matter how much the controller will cost (within reason of course)?
I agree with Andy, go for an STM32 or any other brand Cortex-based device. Probably costs a little bit more than the low-end PIC's,
but much more versatile. And much more usefull learning experience. Master the Ardwino and you're a hacker, master the Cortex and you become an embedded engineer