Microchip Unveils Online MPLAB IDE and $10 Board

hackaday.com

2 pointsszczys3 comments

Is there any reason to use PIC instead of ARM at this point? You can get similarly priced dev boards for Cortex M0 microcontrollers.

I always think you should start out learning 8-bit micros like PIC or AVR. The datasheets are short enough you can conceivably read the whole thing. This gets you some instinct on what peripherals a micro should have, how to look up their functionality, how to troubleshoot when they don't work, etc.

There's a much higher bar for getting everything working on an ARM controller (ie: did you turn on the peripheral clock before trying to drive that pin?). But I agree, once you're initiated you should prototype everything on a 32-bit micro and then port to smaller or more cost effective chips once all the functionality is established.

That's a fair point. I started with AVR myself and I can imagine that I might have gotten pretty frustrated if I'd tried to jump straight into ARM. As far as cost-effectiveness is concerned, there are some very cheap cortex M0 chips out there now (e.g. http://www2.mouser.com/ProductDetail/STMicroelectronics/STM3..., http://www2.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Cypress-Semiconductor/C...). At least in the case of the AVR chips, you have to go to the low-end ATTiny's before there's any significant price advantage in bulk.

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