Moving from 8051 to PIC, ACR or ARM

[electron_boy]

about pic and avr

hi

i ve been working with 8051 how to move other mcu s. is pic is a good choice .if so which pic series i can start with. how about avr and arm processors.

 

[vdaniel]

Re: about pic and avr

If you have a choice, then better jump to ARM, for example LPC21xx. They are
approaching 8-bit parts by price and are much more powerful.
Though the Philips documentation is very far from ideal, but there are many good discussion forums, where you can find an answers for most your questions. For start with ARM I can recommend www.keil.com. They have very nice and cheap evaluation boards and free evaluation design software.

Varuzhan

 

[masoudk_81]

Re: about pic and avr

Hi

I have worked with both PICs and AVRs, I thing AVRs are more powerful
than PICs in some cases, but PICs has some powerful features for advanced programmers and microchip has supported the users of PIC so much powerful than Atmel.
I think if you have worked with 8051, you can easily switch to AVRs. you can first write some assembly programs with AVRstudio that can be downloaded from atmel site. then you can switch to C programming with compilers like codevision and imagecraft. the programmer is STK200 that is a chip programmer.

masoud

 

[jshroff]

Re: about pic and avr

If you have a choice, then better jump to ARM, for example LPC21xx. They are
approaching 8-bit parts by price and are much more powerful.
Though the Philips documentation is very far from ideal, but there are many good discussion forums, where you can find an answers for most your questions. For start with ARM I can recommend **broken link removed**. They have very nice and cheap evaluation boards and free evaluation design software.

Varuzhan

Well the philips parts do look good except that I cannot find any place that carries them in hobby quatities, can anyone recommend a good source for the LPC21?

 

[jojokatada]

Re: about pic and avr

hi
in the market today there are many MCU available that mark a certain segment of the market, there are 8bit, 16bit and 32bit MCU.

so far on the 8bit market PICMCU is the leader becaue it use Harvard Architecture or RISC most of it only have 35 instructions compare to its class other more than hundred.

 

[ashfaque]

about pic and avr

You can try PIC18F452.

 

[vdaniel]

Re: about pic and avr

I agree, it is very difficult to find small quantities of Philips parts. But starting today for hobby problems with 8-bit is not wise. You pay, less than $10 for a 32-bit chip and have unlimited possibilities for experiments. The $1-2 8-bits have a sense, if you do design for large production.
Another source for cheap 32-bit ARMs is ATMEL.
Varuzhan

 

[kekon]

Re: about pic and avr

I have some experiences as with PIC so with AVR microcontrollers. There is a great choice of different PIC's; they have well designed peripherals, high-current output ports and they're resistant to electromagnetic interference. A very important advantage is the watchdog which cannot be disabled by software. However, PIC's architecture is sick especially PIC12, PIC16 and PIC17 family. They weren't designed for high-level languages programming. Of course there are C-compilers for PIC12, 16 and 17 families but the code generated is large and unefficient. PIC18XX family has improved architecture but it's still far from perfect.
Some PIC devices have an ability to connect external memory of size up to 2MB.
AVR microcontrollers have architecture designed for high-level languages. Writting software is not difficult even if you write your programs in assembly language. AVR have powerfull instructions set, much better and richer than PICs. The interrupt vectors are assigned to each peripheral unit as opposed to PICs devices where you have only one interrupt vector (PIC12, 14, 16, 17) and two vectors in PIC18 devices. It makes software run slower and occupies more memory space.

 

[metal]

Re: about pic and avr

Hello

There are many aspects to argue about for PICs and VARs, speed, architecture, learning slope, availability, development software available, programmers, and prices.

If you are looking for speed then you can surely go for VARs, as they fetch, execute, and generate the result for an instruction in one clock cycle, so are amazingly much faster than PICs that divide the original clock by four. A PIC runing at 4MHz clock, is in fact runing at 1MHz speed internally, and an AVR running at 8MHz clock, is really running at 8MHz....

Architecture of PICs as many guys already said is not oriented for higher level languages, and thats a bad drawback concerning the large code generated by most high level compilers for PICs, whether the assembly is generated by basic or C compiler, is still far from that written orginally in assembly. Atmel claims that they have designed AVR architecture to cope with high level languanges in cooperation with IAR, so during the development days of AVR series, engineers of Atmel and IAR were working in parallel to develp AVRs. But in general, most 8 bit RISC MCUs are bot meant to go for any high level languages in essence, so we can ask Atmel how far thier 8 bit RISC processros copatible with high level languages. Even if they AVRs are well designed to be compatible with higher level languages, its still well know for professional engineers that the best way to get every thing from PICs or AVRs is to use thier native assembly instruction set !!

To let you imagine how fast the learning slope for PICs is, I have learnt PICs programming in two weeks only, and started developing projects for PICs one month later...I have tried to learn AVRs many times, but I was not that serious learning them, so I cant say a word about that issue.

Availability is an important issue in deed, when I go to any electronic retailer in my country, I can find as much PICs available as audio ICs, so I don't have to worry whether I will find a chip or not, also AVRs are available, but not as much as PICs, they are new to the market, and microchip knows how to attract customers very well indeed. Also frakly speaking, if you do a search for a PIC schematic or project, how many sites you will find, too many in deed. Do a search for an AVR project, and you will get frustrated, all projects are extremely advanced and out of budjet for a begginer in deed.

I don't think you will use assembly for PICs nor AVRs, so before you can decide which family to pick up, you have to search for the available high level compilers for both families. I remember I have seen a good C compiler for AVRs called WinAVR and its free, as an IDE for KamAVR. For PICs I am sure you will have many choices, just decide, and PM me to help you further.

I am not expert in AVR programmers, but I did a serch for programmer schematic, and was not so happy with what I found, any way, I know that all PICs are programmer with one preogrammer hardware which can be easily built and tested. Other guys may be of help if you decide to go for AVR programmers too.

As far as I know, PICs are still much cheaper and available than AVRs, but in many countries will find the opposite to this fact in deed...

Good luck with your choice any way....

 

[kekon]

Re: about pic and avr

Well, in my country (Poland) AVRs are more common than PIC's. They are chosen more often by amateurs as well as by proffesional designers. Also, their price is lower. As I have made some projects with both PIC's and AVR's now I'm hesitating which to choose for my new design... From an end user point of view there is no concern about what uP was used inside his equipment. I think that some of us are just accustomed to PIC's and some to AVR's.

 

[uk]

Re: about pic and avr

u can start by pic16f84. Aproach to the matter in a practical manner. First find an aplication hobby circuit from internet and try tor reailize it.

 

[Bingo600]

about pic and avr

The free C-Compiler for the AVR series is definately a plus (WinAVR or AVR-GCC).

The AVR is faster than the PIC , and i like it better than the PIC.

That said .. the PIC has a strong supportorganization with some extremely good application notes , and even i do read Microchip app notes (he..he) even though i am clearly for the AVR

If i should choose i would go for AVR for small projects , and ARM if i needed the "Horsepower" (Imaging , MP3 , fast TCP/IP etc..)

Ohh: I would start with an AtMega88 (or the older AtMega8) , its around 1.50..1.80 Euros in single quantity.

/Bingo

 

[idlebrain]

Re: about pic and avr

That is greatness of microchip, I do agree.

I never worked with any PIC till now, I have been visiting the site somany times for application notes, example source code etc. There is lot of usefull application notes available.

Cheers
idlebrain

 

[yogi]

about pic and avr

if u use AVR then i can help u

cost of programmer is cost of 1 parallel port cable +5wires

use aVRDude +bsd programmer for AVr
in memory to cost AVR is best, so as speed
but learning PIC is best

 

[metal]

Re: about pic and avr

in memory to cost AVR is best, so as speed
but learning PIC is best

Thanks for your comment yogi...Can you please explain your point of view...

Thanks