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Comment by forgottenpaswrd | Hacker News Reader

The best Microcontroller?

Does it works on Linux or mac?.

No.

It that software opensource?

Why then I should choose this thing instead of more powerful and closed micros like this?: http://www.microchip.com/stellent/idcplg?IdcService=SS_GET_P...

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I think we can all agree that the arduino IDE is a terrible piece of software. It works... on most platforms. It's not bloated. It's kind of documented. That's about all the good you can say about it.

...but I have to agree, sounds like this is a neat platform, but if I can't write, compile and deploy code to it, what's the point?

Is it really that hard to provide a tool chain that lets you cross compile binaries for a platform, and a set of headers? I hate these 'integrated development environments'. It's just bloated rubbish-ware.

For all the lack of support the android NDK gets from google, at least they got that right. It's a compiler. That's all it does. You write code in whatever the heck you want, and just compile it.

I don't get why so many companies have such a hard time with understanding why this is desirable.

Arduino is just an AVR processor nicely wrapped. They offer their own IDE so you don't have to bother with the difficulties in getting your code on your device.

Atmel maintains an AVR port of the GNU toolchain and provides their own IDE based on Visual Studio.

Eclipse + AVRdude is also an excellent IDE for Arduino development.

Because good programmers are hard to find, and hardware companies sell more if they can convince EE design managers that their software is so easy, even the outsourced interns can be productive with it. Everything becomes crappy, because most people don't want to wait longer and pay more for quality.

I use a mac, exclusively, and VirtualBox runs PSoC Creator flawlessly, both with WinXP and Win7.

I actually find developing on the mac quite useful, since when I'm making a USB device with PSoC, I can use libusb (cross-platform USB library) without having to install any device drivers. It works great with PyUSB and makes developing USB projects a snap.

The IDE isn't open source, but it is free.

I would argue that this is indeed the best microcontroller for hobbyists and students.

It's like having an FPGA, a 32 bit micro, and a handful of analog parts, that you can connect however you like in software using a graphical interface.

If you want to dig deeper, you can program any of the PLD-based digital blocks in verilog, hand tune your analog design routing, and more.

You could even implement an additional 8-bit CPU on the block diagram using drag and drop components if you're really feeling frisky.

More powerful in what way?

I don't think there are any PICs with integrated PLD blocks, or GPIOs that are routable to any peripheral. "Best" may be a silly term for it, but that's definitely really useful to have in a development board.

In the dsPIC family, any RP pin is routable to any peripheral. Most GPIO pins are also RP pins.

Ah, I haven't used any of the dsPICs. Thanks for the info.

The best Microcontroller is the one that works for you and does what you need. In my case I bought a few of these and they rock:

http://www.ghielectronics.com/catalog/product/353

(I also don't have to piss around with C+RTOS for what I need - it's just a C# program!)

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