Suggestion of a microcontroller

Hi

I have been an analog/RF engineer for many years. My last design using microcontroller was 68HC11 back in the early 90s. I am doing hobbies that I can use a smaller microcontroller. One purpose comes to mind is monitoring the bias current of a Class AB power amp, reading the bias, then adjust back to the set bias as it drifts with temperature. Simple things like this with a DAC and ADC build in. Just enough EPROM and RAM to do simple job like this little closed loop feedback stuff.

I need suggestion for one that is:

1) Not a lot of pin out so it's easy to solder and desolder.
2) One that is going to be around for a long time, popular one that have good support.

My friend suggested me this family:

https://www.digikey.com/product-search/en?keywords=CY8C4245AXI-473-ND

I have to take the time to learn it, so I want to learn the right one.

Thanks

STM32F0 series

Some 8pin series controllers you can invest your time and money:

ATTiny 13/13a OR ATTiny 25/45/85

Can I suggest that you also start with a development kit for whatever family of devices you select. Often these come with programming/debugging interfaces and on-board connectors to the various peripheral devices within the MCU that will ease the learning curve a bit.
While you say that your application is '...simple...', my experience is that there is generally a steep learning curve to get even a simple 'flash a LED' program working correctly but once you have then it is much easier to build up to what you are wanting to do.
Susan

Hello!

1) Not a lot of pin out so it's easy to solder and desolder.

Click to expand...

As for soldering, it doesn't depend on the number of pins. Once you have aligned
2 opposite corners, the rest will be fine.
As for desoldering, it depends whether you want to reuse the chip after desoldering.
But usually you don't desolder a chip unless it's already fried.
What I use is a hot air blower (the stuff that looks like a hair dryer, but that fries
you bald if you confuse). With this method, you can desolder quite large chips.
I have never experienced very large chips like old 200 pins FPGAs, but for 144 pin
LQFP or QFN it works fine.

2) One that is going to be around for a long time, popular one that have good support.

Click to expand...

To my knowledge, this is the case of all MCUs. Any silicon maker invests a lot of money in
a chip development. Therefore he has to sell it for a long time, and in most of the cases,
you can still purchase them for decades. For example, you can still buy a Z80, which was
quite popular in the early 80s. You can also buy a 6811.

Dora.