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Beginner question about a micro-controller project

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floppy32

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I need to work on a project where the microcontroller should:

1-)Read three voltage outputs of an accelerometer
2-)Log the data to an SD card
3-)Send the logged data to cloud by intervals via a GPRS module

The requirements are to make it cheap and most importantly low power. I will have enough time for this I guess.
But since there are zillions of micros in the market from AVR, PIC and ARM the very start of this looks very fuzzy to me. Having said that I have some experience with AVR but mostly Arduinos.

My first aim to make a prototype before going into details. The reason I'm asking this question is to identify the main path I should start.

What type of uC would be suitable for such project? Does anybody have any experience with such task?
Do you think it would be very hard to use STM32? Any ideas would be very much appreciated.
 

Any of the micros you mention should be able to perform the tasks you require. If you're familiar with AVR, I would definitely pursue that path first.
Do you need to design the hardware, or just write software?
I'm sure you can find boards (Arduino or development boards) with AVR, three ADC channels and an SD card, not sure about a GPRS module, but there's probably something that would easily connect to the AVR board.
 

Hi,

I agree: If you have experience with AVR, then use them. There are so called "pico power" AVRs for low power consumption. For sure only during "power down" --> software controlled. Read AVR "low power" application notes.

GPRS: There are cheap SIM800 Modules. They should be supported by Arduino.

The rest:
Without values nobody can tell whether it can work with microcontroller X or not.
ADC: Resolution, sample rate
LOG: Log rate, datasize per item, time
SEND: data rate, protocol ...

Klaus
 

I only can say at the moment that first I need to make a prototype. The goal is to build so many of them. Besides very low power consumption other requirements are:

16-bit ADC (This could be down to 12-bit since I'm not sure there is uC with 16 bit ADC)
Sample rate anything 4kHz is adequate.
At the moment I don't know anything about SD LOG and SEND.

I only have some familiarity with AVR 8-bit data bus width. Do you think for this application 8-bit is adequate?
 

Hi,

It's not fair that you should build a prototype without knowing full specifications.

Try to get full requirements first.

Klaus
 

Totally agree with Klaus. How can you build something without knowing its requirements first?

And you seem to be letting the devices drive your requirements, rather than the other way around. You want a 16-bit ADC, but you can use 12-bits because there are no uP with 16 bit ADCs? Then you actually DON'T need 16 bits. Again, establish your requirements first.
 

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