What "non-mainstream" microcontrollers do people use?

[brucehoult]

Ever on and on I continue circling
With nothing but my hate of PICs a certainty

Hate is a waste of energy. There are certainly very many applications where 256 B of RAM and 7 KB flash and limited instruction set of a PIC12 will do the job just fine.

I'm not sure there are many where they'd be BETTER or cheaper than an ATTiny45 (256B/4k)  or ATTiny85 (512B/8k), let alone a 10c PY32f002a (Arm Cortex-M0+, 3k/20k) or CH32V003 (RISC-V 2k/16k) but if you've got a design that works and limited needs and are familiar with them then there's little need to change.

Apparently there can be some advantage in PIC peripherals over AVR or Arm/RISC-V (both the mentioned chips implement STM32-clone peripherals) in some way I'm not familiar with. Or maybe low power modes or other non-ISA things.

Microchip had the sense to use standard ISAs for their 32 bit (MIPS/Arm) and 64 bit (RISC-V) microcontrollers.

[SiliconWizard]

Also, judging an architecture that is 30 years old with today's eyes makes little sense.
Are there "better" options these days (define better)? Sure.
Were there at the time it got released? Not that much.

And even without going back to 30 years ago, when Microchip released their XLP series, there wasn't that much competition, and it wasn't that long ago.
Operating temperatures are also a strong point with Microchip MCUs. There aren't that many MCUs that can operate at 150°C reliably.
I have used PIC24 MCUs for high-temperature, low-power designs. Worked great. Yes, also Microchip MCUs have evolved a lot since the first 8-bit PICs.

Now I'm not sure using their "low-end" 8-bitters makes sense anymore *for new projects* considering what's available otherwise, but IMO they can still provide a great learning experience precisely due to their simple, yet quirky ISA. That's great for learning how to design with constraints, something that learning on beefier platforms will never force you to do.

[tim_]

I was wondering, are there any compelling reasons to use the PY32Fxxx devices?

In the past I had ordered various of them, because they were cheap. Yesterday I finally got around trying a blinky on them and looking at the datasheets.

- Again, very much inspired by STM32
- The PY32F002 is a simplified device that sits even below the STM32C011
- They only seem to remove features, but did not come up with anything interested and new??!
- Very confusing product portfolio management on PY side: Lots of the devices I had were apparently already discontinued. (PY32F002"A", F003 etc..)
- Power consumption in ultra low power states (32kHz) is much higher than STM32C0xxx
- 5V supply is nice

So the main benefit is the price and 5V supply.

[tim_]

Btw, I still like the Padauks as "PICs on stereoids". I just wish they had a better programming interface.

There are now flash variants at $0.05.

[brucehoult]

- Very confusing product portfolio management on PY side: Lots of the devices I had were apparently already discontinued. (PY32F002"A", F003 etc..)

Oh, interesting. I think it's DavidAlfa on this board who likes PY32F002A, but most people seem to prefer the slightly smaller (2k RAM vs 3k, 16k flash vs 20k) RISC-V CH32V003 and more recent 002, 004, 006 models with more RAM and flash, better ADC, hardware multiply at the same price.

The cheap Padauks are just 1024 instructions and I think 32 bytes RAM. The 3c ones were OTP and flash versions I think as much or more than PY32 and CH32V for a far lower spec chip.

[eeproks]

I have the same kit someplace.  Excellent way to get into 8051 back in the day.