[sdiy] Microcontrollers, development environments and hardware programmer recommendations.

[Gordonjcp]

On Sat, Oct 22, 2016 at 09:54:58PM +0900, Ben Riggs wrote:
> 1. I travel a lot (8 months of the year living out of a suitcase/ working out of a pelican toolbox) and travel with a current model MacBook (with the single USB-C port). I noticed that MPLAB IDE X runs on mac which is good. what other development environments do?
> 2. a hardware programmer, portability is key. USB and port powered preferable.
> 3. are PICs old tech now? is it better to move on and learn something new? what are the options?

1) The ARM and AVR toolchains are based on GCC.  I never really got into PICs because with only an assembler available they were a nightmare to work with.

2) Most things now don't really require an external programmer, or if they do it's a fairly small and simple device.

3) PICs still have a lot of bang-per-buck (and I must admit I haven't played with the DSPIC stuff but it looks good).  You can get an STM32F103 which is a 72MHz ARM with a decent amount of flash and RAM, a bunch of PWMs and timers, a couple of UARTs, and a USB port for about two quid.  You'll need a programmer, but just buy one of the STM32 Discovery boards which will have an ST-Link programmer (bog standard SWD, as far as I can tell) built in which can be jumpered either to the target on board or a 4-pin header for your device.  They're about a tenner.

I spotted a while ago on a Facebook post where someone wanted help resticking a broken USB port that those little Akai controllers use an STM32F103 and have an unpopulated pad for a four-pin header right there on the board.  You could reflash that and turn it into a standalone synth.

-- 
Gordonjcp MM0YEQ