Which microcontroller do you use or prefer and why?

hi
i use the avr because
avr afer me a 16bit perforanc in a 8bit microcontroler price
and the avr is fastest than pic because the clock you used that become to cpu
without divide so vhen you use pic with 40M your cpu clock have 10M clock
but vhen you use 16Mclock in avr you have 16M clock in your cpu
with low xtal price
and the ave internal eeprom and sram is bigest than pic in same
thank you

I would recommend PIC as it is easier to learn, smaller to be used as many of the features are builtin and you don't need to attach extra units like ADC's etc, multifunctional pins...
what else do you want...
Best Regards

actually, this is my first to use microcontroller and it is 89c2051...i can say that this microcontroller is easy to understand,like what other says, it is also available anywhere in the market..

in a simple to medium projects you can use of mcs50(2051 to 8051) because it cost(inexpensive)
if project use in industry and need to higer speed or low power and low noise you can use of avr series

I prefer to use PIC controller because it is easy to use due to its large variety of available compilers and easy to use builtin components like ADC/Serial transmission without MAX and more ...

I use AVR and I am intending to start with ARM (I have purchased few ARM7 uC's, and they are waiting for my free time)

I hav quite nice expirience with AVR, comparing to PIC I could say that they are more reliable. Maybe that a friend of mine had a bad experience with a PIC (16f84 as I remember), but here is the story:

Unlike me (physicist) he is an electrical engenner (basicaly high voltage high current - energetical engeneering) and he had some other aproach to the microcontroller. He started to test some very interesting performance of uC right away. He bought a development system, an we programed a simple application, We made an infinit loop that lights the diodes on odd bits of a port, and then the even ones after a pause. It was a briliant ide that he got at that moment: "Suppose that we have some induced current on one of the pins, what should happend?", I told him about the clamping (protection) diodes that every uC have in modern time. The other idea was more delightfull: "Lets activate the pullup (I think so) taster's and make a test what would happend if we connect the output to the supply voltage!". Unlike all that I have expected this procedure has influenced the register inside PIC ?!?!?!?!?!?!?! After such an procedure, if You have been lucku to stop pressing the taster in a moment when the output bit was HIH all was OK, but if it is not so, the register inside PIC was changed and the program continues to make inversion of the changed states (unrecoverable error!).

By my opinion, since I have used PIC in two or thee cases, it is EXTREMLEY GOOD for SMALL CODE APLICATION if you are using ASSEMBER. I also hav a nice C, but be CAREFULL ABOUT THE TYPE OF DEVICE (I suppose that this kind of behavior is not inherited in more modern Microchip uC).

Basicaly:

AVR - Fast electricaly more secure than PIC, relatively small amount of code developed by other people in comparison with PIC and 8051
8051 - industry standard (of a past times), lot of code, proven in aplications
PIC - lot of code, best for assembler programming (RISC of the RISCS for asembler), but....
ARM - Fast, lot of applications, lot of producers of a hardware with a minor diferences, I think this would be the best choice if You consider learning something in a world of 32 bits.

Others - I, and my frends had no experience with them.

Bye!
Nenad

What is the best thing about PIC microcontroller? How can I use it for the access code control door of our building?

for me 8051 with bascom is the pwerful and best microcontroller with ide
why:
cause i can do what i need with it

hello,
I prefer Microchip PIC and avr (atmr) because i like it too and i am pro in this section.
regards.

my favorite is 8051 because i can get it easily but its c compiler causes some problem.
and it is a real fact that microchip has a wonderful technical support.
i can not decide which is better..

I prefer PIC, more resources and tools found in the web and Microchip website

i used both 8052 core( from Atmel and Philips) and PIC 16F877A..... i found PIC is more robust in industrial applications....... but 8051 core is easy to use

i use Atmel 89s52 cause the it has the ISP and cost is cheaper than PIC 16F877

what are some good PIC 18F project for people who want to learn how to use them. something other then making LED's turn on and off.

i like at89sxx series because it is easy to learn, and powerful enough for many of my projects. i would like to try avr and pic someday later, though.

8051， i want learn
arm7

Atmel is the best as available easily and easy for beginners.

pic's only because where i work they threw away pcb's with 3x 16f84 chips onboard .which after googleing what the chip was i got into pic programming

I work with 8051 microcontroller , i prefer tit because it's very simple and can do a huge number of application

I use the 8051 in 8-bit, dsPIC in 16-bit, and learining ARM7 for 32-bit.
The 8051 is the industry-standard architecture with lragest collection of variants, vedores, support software, efficient C compilers, low prices.
dsPIC with its rich peripherals and low-cost.
ARM7 most popular 32-bit processor with low power consumption and many vendors, large variants, and low cost parts available.