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The cheapest flash microcontroller you can buy is actually an Arm Cortex-M0+
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- snvzz 4y agoCompetitive with CH32V, I wonder.
- nieve 4y agoThat's directly addressed in the actual post.
- snvzz 4y agoI don't necessarily agree with their take; When your focus is unit cost, tooling is more important. But it is true that CH32V tooling is, right now, quite sad. Particularly, the only way to flash these devices is to use proprietary tools. That's a major stopper.
- Animats 4y agoThere's something to be said for EPROM embedded devices. No update-induced bugs.
- synergy20 4y agodo sourcing chips from china have some risks these days?
- kken 4y agoI'd guess the main risk is that these are fairly small companies with shaky financials that may go under.
- nullc 4y agoThey're so inexpensive that perhaps you could just purchase a lifetime supply right out the gate? :P
- throwaway742 4y agoEverything is from China.
- throwawaylinux 4y agoWell not the chips or the microcontroller IP, but maybe the packaged product.
- astrange 4y agoI read today that 8% of US good consumption is from China.
- dragontamer 4y agoMost chips (and these probably included?) are actually from Taiwan. I know that AVR, PIC, microcontrollers directly ship out of Taiwan for instance.
- Havoc 4y agoFor hobbyist I'd say risk here is near zero - comparatively at least. These are going to get wiped and don't have an obvious persistent attack vector and likely deployed behind a NAT. There are a bunch of much softer targets in the average home that don't (IoTs, routers, software etc). Unless using commercially or you're someone special I don't think it's worth worrying
- fzliu 4y ago> The PY32F030 parts advertise a typical low-power stop mode current consumption of 4.5 µA when using a 1.0V setting with the internal regulator, and I was able to get the part to drop down to 5 µA in my testing. Meanwhile, the STM32F030 uses less than half of that in stop mode I've had the same experience with cheap (Chinese) microcontrollers - power consumption is usually higher across all modes.
- londons_explore 4y agoIt's due to leakage current due to the design being produced on a less refined silicon process. Live with it, or have external circuitry to power down the whole chip when not in use.
- mlindner 4y agoI'm not sure why people try and go for the cheapest microcontroller. These things all have unit prices in the single digit dollars or less in actual production costs. Finding a cheap microcontroller is entirely about finding a cheap reseller of whatever you're trying to get rather than finding a cheap part specifically. Only when you get to truly large volumes such that you can get volume discounts does unit price really start to matter. Especially if you're a hobbyist, price should just basically not be a factor in what you're choosing as they're all in the same ballpark from resellers.
- kken 4y agoI think the main appeal is to work with small devices that have well defined resources. Just consider the popularity of the ATtiny85. However, low end 32bit devices are also available from reputed suppliers. In fact, STM just announced the STM32C* series which is also aimed at replacing 8 bit controllers. The cost benefit may only be true for low numbers and when sourcing from distributors. I am fairly certain that the price advantage is much less when talking about actual production volumes *https://www.st.com/en/microcontrollers-microprocessors/stm32c0x1.html https://www.st.com/en/microcontrollers-microprocessors/stm32...
- TheLoafOfBread 4y agoCan I buy STM32 in some decent numbers, or are they still made out of unobtanium?
- mastax 4y agoGenerally the newer STM32s are easier to find because, I assume, they aren't being snatched up by the billions to make designs that were finalized well before these chips were released. I didn't have trouble finding STM32G0 during the height of the shortages.
- DiabloD3 4y agoThis is the problem when building around a specific part, no matter how cheap. The hobbyist community has selected certain daughter boards to clone, and then place SoCs on them that can run Linux (or any other hobbyist OS). If one SoC vanishes from the market, you can drop another one in, and often with zero changes to your design, keep going.
- hinkley 4y agoI thought this was about a microcontroller to control Flash storage, not a microcontroller with flash built in. I was all ready for a conversation about replacing computer subsystems with standard parts + open source. Tsk.
- elsjaako 4y agoI wonder if the low price could be helped by the core being licensed from "rogue" Arm China. They still seem to be operating independently. https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/ousted-arm-china-ceo-refuses-to-go-after-being-fired-again/ https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/ousted-arm-china-...
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- daneel_w 4y agoIs this legitimately licensed IP, or at this point stolen IP?
- londons_explore 4y agoThe clones tend to be reimplemented from scratch. It turns out a team of 10 in a few months can reimplement a small microcontroller from just the public documentation of a competitor. By being 100% compatible, customers can move across without any engineering work, and you can reuse the same toolchain. I doubt either the manufacturer or their customers will have any legal issues. On the other hand, you probably will have issues when the original and the clone differ slightly or have different bugs.
- mmoskal 4y agoTFA says this one isn't STM32 clone though. Just the peripherals are similar. Not sure about ARM license.
- duskwuff 4y ago> Not sure about ARM license. I wouldn't be surprised if that's legit. The Cortex-M0/M0+ core is fairly inexpensive to license and use. It's effectively a loss-leader for ARM.
- benj111 4y agoWhy would it be a loss leader? Surely it's because 0.1c X a bajillion chips is still a lot.
- londons_explore 4y agoBecause there are a lot of other tiny microcontroller ISA's, and there isn't much value in using one over another. If they charged much at all, then people would just use another.
- DiabloD3 4y agoI think he's doing an important analysis, but not for DIY hobbyists: knowing how cheap your SoC is only makes sense when you're finalizing a BOM for mass production, even if they're small runs. The SoC is only one component of at least a dozen required to make a working microcontroller board. If you're doing DIY hobbyist yourself, you'll want to buy pre-mounted SoCs in a known form factor (as in, it is on a tiny daughter board, and that board has a known pin-out that remains consistent across clones). Example: the Pro Micro. A Raspberry Pi branded Cortex-M0+ on a Pro Micro clone board sold under the Sparkfun brand is $11: https://www.sparkfun.com/products/18288 https://www.sparkfun.com/products/18288 All the components to have a fully working microcontroller out of the box is included; the SoC, RAM, flash, USB connector, the rest, and it's all machine placed and soldered, and individually tested. The dev board of the SoC he selected is $5, but get shipped from China and seem to be incomplete dev kits (no USB, no flash reprogramming pins, and the docs aren't great); it also doesn't seem to be a standard/popular form factor. The analysis in the article is only the part that would lead you to "if I wanted to make my own Pro Micro-sized microcontroller, which SoC is cheap but good"; you still need the cheap but good equivalents for the rest of the components and then actually be able to solder it (SMD components suck for humans to hand place).
- technothrasher 4y agoIt was an interesting read for me, as I build professional boards from scratch using LPC and STM series chips at work, and so have the tooling to play around with cheapy things like this on a DIY hobby basis. I usually don't like to go with the pre-built SoC boards because they do it differently than I like, and since I have the resources to do it my way, I can.
- dragontamer 4y agoRP2040 has zero flash on board and is a terrible chip to use as an example. Its actually a lot more complex to boot up than other chips, and I personally consider it closer to a microprocessor than a microcontroller (its somewhere in between). STM32F0 is a cheap Cortex M0+ that has on-board flash and on-board oscillator. Other Cortex M0+ parts are similar (with the RP2040 as a massive exception). This means that the board design is extremely simple. --------- > the SoC, RAM, flash, USB connector, the rest, and it's all machine placed and soldered, and individually tested. Case in point: STM32F0 has RAM, Flash, Oscillator all on the SoC. Just apply Vcc + Ground and your code is running. I guess programming is somewhat difficult, but sockets do exist for a variety of form factors. ZIF sockets for DIP are cheap, looks like the sockets for STM32F0 (64 quad flat package) are a bit pricy though. But an "on board" chip programmer is simple in my experience. STM32 / Microchip SAM Cortex chips are designed to be easily programmed and prototyped. -------- I think you're right in that hobbyists ought to start with developer boards. USB "makes sense" to a lot of people. But I also want to encourage hobbyists, even advanced beginners, to mess with chips directly. Some chips are much easier to bootstrap than others. Yes, even on a breadboard. https://www.brennantymrak.com/articles/programming-avr-with-arduino https://www.brennantymrak.com/articles/programming-avr-with-...
- joezydeco 4y agoLike most Arm parts from the East, Puya’s SDK has set them up for Keil MDK development. You can definitely go grab a free version of Keil MDK and get going immediately, but I wanted a VSCode / Cortex-Debug / GCC-based solution, which took a bit more fiddling. marus25's Cortex-Debug plugin for VSCode is wonderful and I'm starting to see it used more and more in the mainstream. ARM or one of the chipmakers (except possibly Nordic who seems to have their own plugin) should really give this person a salary and help push this plugin along because it shouldn't all depend on one person (c.f. xkcd#2347) https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=marus25.cortex-debug https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=marus25....
- UltraViolence 4y agoI'm looking for a cheap ARM MCU with I2S support and one that I found was a Chinese part from GigaDevices which is $0.50. On the other hand, lots of software is written for STM devices so spending a couple of bucks more for their parts will save you development costs and time.
- daviddever23box 4y agoFrom an employer's perspective, the extra cost of a ready-to-roll development target is always worth it in terms of productivity. Today's constraints are not tomorrow's constraints; I'd rather be hustling to acquire the skills necessary to earn 500x (or greater) that $100 USD per month.
- mmoskal 4y agoThe reprogrammable 8 bit Padauk PFS122 is around 6 cents, though out of stock. That's less then PY32 though admittedly not by much. https://www.lcsc.com/mobile/product-detail/Microcontroller-Units-MCUs-MPUs-SOCs_PADAUK-Tech-PFS122-S14_C3646911.html https://www.lcsc.com/mobile/product-detail/Microcontroller-U...
- pjmlp 4y agoIt is supported by Astrobe, for those that would like a bit of Oberon and safety fun while targeting it. https://www.astrobe.com/astrobe.htm https://www.astrobe.com/astrobe.htm