can anyone recommend me a microcontroller

>looking for... I've thought about a PIC but I've never used one of
>those.... and hear that they are not programmable in C and have a
>small instruction set....  any suggestions?

program in assembler. with a small instruction set, it's not hard.
Look at the data sheets to get a sense of PIC programming.
-- 
	mac the na�f

panfilero wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I'm in need of a small microcontroller that has ADC and DAC
> capabilities and PWM also but not much of anything else.... most the
> microcontroller's I've found while trying to search for these criteria
> are a little overkill...... an 8 bit or 16 bit would probally be fine,
> low power would be great but ADC and DAC are the main things I'm
> looking for... I've thought about a PIC but I've never used one of
> those.... and hear that they are not programmable in C and have a
> small instruction set....  any suggestions?

One of the smallest models with DAC is the SiLabs C8051F330 and 
C8051T630 (new OTP, 62c/10K). This has 10 bit adc/dac,

If you need better performance, and 5V IO, their C8051F41x series
has 12bit ADC and dual DAC

With all of these, Silabs have low cost USB Tool Sticks.

-jg

On 26 Mar, 15:13, panfilero <panfil...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I'm in need of a small microcontroller that has ADC and DAC
> capabilities and PWM also but not much of anything else.... most the
> microcontroller's I've found while trying to search for these criteria
> are a little overkill...... an 8 bit or 16 bit would probally be fine,
> low power would be great but ADC and DAC are the main things I'm
> looking for... I've thought about a PIC but I've never used one of
> those.... and hear that they are not programmable in C and have a
> small instruction set.... =A0any suggestions?
>
> thanks
> J.

The NXP LPC2148 ARM has an ADC and DAC. It's quite cheap and good C
compilers for it are available.

Leon

On Wed, 26 Mar 2008 10:01:26 -0500, Tim Wescott <tim@seemywebsite.com>
wrote:

>What's wrong with a small instruction set?  More importantly, PICs (and 
>8051s) have instruction sets that are an awkward fit with C, but you can 
>get C compilers for them that work reasonably well.  The Atmel AVR has an 
>instruction set that is small [...]

"small"???

PIC16 -->  35 instructions
PIC18 -->  83 instructions
AVR   --> 131 instructions (including 2-cycle multiply)

Best,
Jon

In article <94232517-b493-4d95-9331-b863f3a60e68
@s37g2000prg.googlegroups.com>, panfilero@gmail.com says...
> Hello,
> 
> I'm in need of a small microcontroller that has ADC and DAC
> capabilities and PWM also but not much of anything else.... most the
> microcontroller's I've found while trying to search for these criteria
> are a little overkill...... an 8 bit or 16 bit would probally be fine,
> low power would be great but ADC and DAC are the main things I'm
> looking for... I've thought about a PIC but I've never used one of
> those.... and hear that they are not programmable in C and have a
> small instruction set....  any suggestions?
> 
MSP430F1611.   12-bit ADC(8 ch) and DAC (2 ch).  Good C compilers
are available and it's pretty power-efficient.  If you need less
than 12-bit resolution,  the choices expand greatly.  You
didn't say how much resolution you need on the ADC and DAC.


Mark Borgerson

On 2008-03-27, Mark Borgerson <mborgerson@comcast.net> wrote:
> In article <94232517-b493-4d95-9331-b863f3a60e68
> @s37g2000prg.googlegroups.com>, panfilero@gmail.com says...
>> Hello,
>> 
>> I'm in need of a small microcontroller that has ADC and DAC
>> capabilities and PWM also but not much of anything else.... most the
>> microcontroller's I've found while trying to search for these criteria
>> are a little overkill...... an 8 bit or 16 bit would probally be fine,
>> low power would be great but ADC and DAC are the main things I'm
>> looking for... I've thought about a PIC but I've never used one of
>> those.... and hear that they are not programmable in C and have a
>> small instruction set....  any suggestions?
>> 
> MSP430F1611.   12-bit ADC(8 ch) and DAC (2 ch).  Good C compilers
> are available and it's pretty power-efficient.  If you need less
> than 12-bit resolution,  the choices expand greatly.  You
> didn't say how much resolution you need on the ADC and DAC.

There's another group of '430 parts (I forget the exact part
numbers) with a 16-bit A/D and 12-bit DAC.  IIRC, it's in a
pretty small package.

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  World War III? No
                                  at               thanks!
                               visi.com            

Alex Colvin wrote:

> program in assembler. with a small instruction set, it's not hard.
> Look at the data sheets to get a sense of PIC programming.

Alex is 100% right.  I started off a couple years ago looking to program 
a PIC in C.  It's a waste of time.  First off, there are limited 
free/cheap compilers, and even the commercial ones look like they were 
designed for Windows 95.  I ended up with a Parallax uC because it was 
much faster and had affordable programmers/debuggers.  Parallax makes a 
SX/B (aka basic) which is actually compiled/converted line by line into 
assembly.  It's pretty decent.

Many uC applications are timing sensitive, and a high level language 
like C just gets in the way.  Too much abstraction and you don't know 
what's going on at the hardware level.  You even have to get underneath 
the assembly (and look at machine code) sometimes to get a better idea 
of what's happening.

Keith

Keith M wrote:
> Alex Colvin wrote:
> 
>> program in assembler. with a small instruction set, it's not hard.
>> Look at the data sheets to get a sense of PIC programming.
> 
> Alex is 100% right.  I started off a couple years ago looking to
> program a PIC in C.  It's a waste of time.  First off, there are
> limited free/cheap compilers, and even the commercial ones look
> like they were designed for Windows 95.  I ended up with a
> Parallax uC because it was much faster and had affordable
> programmers/debuggers.  Parallax makes a SX/B (aka basic) which
> is actually compiled/converted line by line into assembly. 
> It's pretty decent.
> 
> Many uC applications are timing sensitive, and a high level
> language like C just gets in the way.  Too much abstraction and
> you don't know what's going on at the hardware level.  You even
> have to get underneath the assembly (and look at machine code)
> sometimes to get a better idea of what's happening.

I also agree.  My experience is about 10 years old with a PIC16.  I
had only simple things to program, so I started with C.  Then I
found that the compilers were far from meeting the C standard.  So
far that I had to verify the translation of everything in detail. 
The compiler vendor was co-operative, in that I could call him up
and report bugs, and he went to work to remove them.  The problem
was that they then showed up elsewhere.  The work wasn't wasted,
though, because I had become thoroughly familiar with the
instruction set and could now do sane assembly programming.

BTW, the bugs were not just the absence of recursive functions,
etc.

-- 
 [mail]: Chuck F (cbfalconer at maineline dot net) 
 [page]: <http://cbfalconer.home.att.net>
            Try the download section.



-- 
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

"panfilero" <panfilero@gmail.com> skrev i meddelandet
news:94232517-b493-4d95-9331-b863f3a60e68@s37g2000prg.googlegroups.com...
> Hello,
>
> I'm in need of a small microcontroller that has ADC and DAC
> capabilities and PWM also but not much of anything else.... most the
> microcontroller's I've found while trying to search for these criteria
> are a little overkill...... an 8 bit or 16 bit would probally be fine,
> low power would be great but ADC and DAC are the main things I'm
> looking for... I've thought about a PIC but I've never used one of
> those.... and hear that they are not programmable in C and have a
> small instruction set....  any suggestions?
>
> thanks
> J.

The new XMEGA AVRs have plenty of 2 Megasample 12 bit ADC channels
and a few 1 Megasample DACs integrated. Plenty of PWMs
and runs up to 32 MIPS (AVR MIPS that is).

Will have very good power consumption and power down currents
are in the uA range.

While the chips available now are in a 100 pin package, you can
create a design with a 44 pin padring inside, and move to the 44 pin
package when it becomes available.
The code should be the same, if the promises hold.

No core change over the earlier AVRs, so with the right
I/O headers, any AVR compiler should do.

-- 
Best Regards,
Ulf Samuelsson
This is intended to be my personal opinion which may,
or may not be shared by my employer Atmel Nordic AB

Andrew Smallshaw wrote:
> On 2008-03-26, panfilero <panfilero@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I'm in need of a small microcontroller that has ADC and DAC
>> capabilities and PWM also but not much of anything else.... most the
>> microcontroller's I've found while trying to search for these criteria
>> are a little overkill...... an 8 bit or 16 bit would probally be fine,
>> low power would be great but ADC and DAC are the main things I'm
>> looking for... I've thought about a PIC but I've never used one of
>> those.... and hear that they are not programmable in C and have a
>> small instruction set....  any suggestions?
> 
> That wish list strongly suggests an MSP430 to me.  Have a look at
> http://focus.ti.com/lit/ml/slab034m/slab034m.pdf for a brief outline
> of the range.  Not all of the units have DACs so isolate those
> before deciding which if any would best suit your needs.
> 
> You're not quite right that PICs don't support C.  As Tim Wescott
> has already pointed out, it's true that the low end PIC10/12/16s
> are not well optimised for C but compilers do exist and people who
> have used them report good results (I've only ever used assembly
> for those devices).  The 'higher' numbered PIC17/18/24 devices are
> much more suited to C.
> 

TI also has 8052 based micros with A/D and D/A.  You did not say how 
many bits you need.
The fact that the PIC ( and 8052) Architecture is a poor fit for C is 
the compiler writer problem not yours.  I have used both and found them 
to be fine.