Re: Microcontroller options
- From: dan michaels <dan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 25 May 2007 14:29:45 -0700
On May 25, 1:11 pm, Onesupermanone <shav...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi!
I am looking for a microcontroller which will match my needs. I have
looked at tons of sites and have a huge number of microcontrollers
that I can use but since the options seem to be endless I can't pick
one. I am hoping someone here will be able to help me out.
I want to build a robot which can move around, have several digital
and analog sensor inputs. I want to set up my robot to have wireless
communication with my PC at home within a limited range. I want to
add small speakers and a microphone as well.
Eventually I want to add a small (color maybe) video camera. Also in
the end I want the robot to use a GPS system for navigation.
This doesn't seem like a lot so I suspect any number of
microcontrollers will do. In university (10 years ago) I used a
handyboard to build / program a robot. My preference it to use C
language.
Money though limited is not a big issue if I can get something which
is more or less plug and play. I want to spend more time programming
the controller and building the actual robot.
Your help is greatly appreciated.
When you say "C", you'll get a lot of advice here, but much of this -
esp regarding ARMs and AVRs - will probably involve using GNU C and
possibly Linux, or maybe one of the stripped down [free] versions of
otherwise rather expensive commercial compilers. So, this will mean
spending a fair amount of time on the learning curve regards
installing and learning to use the environments. So, it helps if
you're very familiar with programming environments, and not too
noobish, if you're gonna go that way.
IOW, there are a LOT of cheap boards around, but you need to check how
easy it is get going on the programming side. Many of the guys here
have been doing it for years, and using tough tools comes easy for
them.
So, all in all, my advice is to figure that your first robot is very
unlikely to be your last one. Therefore, I would get something that's
relatively cheap and easy to program, for my first venture, and use
that as a steppingstone to get acquainted with things. Then, once that
robot is running good, figure out where to go from there.
I've got about a dozen robots, and many of them get by fine with
simple controllers like the Basic Stamp. I don't for instance need a
Mini-ATX [powerful] board for many of them, so I have different
processors for different robots. It's nice to take a processor that
comes with a free IDE that installs instantly, and you can quickly get
going, rather than having to spend days on the initial learning curve.
My 0.02.
.
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