[sdiy] Contemplating DIP microcontrollers

[lanterma at ece.gatech.edu]

The "standard" current Arduino core is the ATMega328P-PU (20 MHz): $4.28 at Mouser.

Some larger versions are:

ATmega164P-20PU - $5.60 at Mouser, $5.60 at DK, $6.12 at Newark
ATmega324P-20PU - $6.61 at Mouser, $7.16 at DK, $7.56 at Newark
ATmega644P-20PU - $8.81 at Mouser, $8.16 at DK

The last one is used in the newest version of the Shruti-1: http://mutable-instruments.net/shruthi1c

(It should be noted that the Shruti-1 uses the ATmega PWM output for its audio, and it sounds *awesome*. I was shocked to find out there wasn't a dedicated DAC.)

The quite unusual Parallax Propeller, PBX32A-D40, is $7.99 Mouser.

If you wanted to use an external DAC (restricting myself to DIP for the moment), I notice the MCP4921-E/P is popular in Arduinoland: the "Audio Player Shield Kit," the "Arduino Pocket Piano," and the "MIDI Vox" all use it. It's $2.36 at DK, $2.08 at Mouser, $1.97 at Newark. It's 8 pin, SPI interface. There's a dual DAC version MCP4922-E/P: $3.14 at DK, $2.76 at Mouser, $2.62 at Newark.

Then there's the dsPICs, which have stereo 16-bit DACs built in:

dsPIC33FJ64GP802-E/SP - $6.84 DK, $5.37 Newark
dsPIC33FJ64GP802-I/SP - $6.24 DK, $4.90 Newark, $5.88 Mouser

dsPIC33FJ128GP802-E/SP - $7.42 DK, $5.83 Newark
dsPIC33FJ128GP802-I/SP - $6.78 DK, $5.32 Newark, $6.38 Mouser

If you add up the cost of, say, an ATMega328P and a MCP4922, you quickly exceed the cost of a dsPIC. So the question is would there be any reason not to jump straight to using a dsPIC?

- Aaron