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Picking the perfect microcontroller

FEATURE

PICKINGTHE

Perfect

Picking the perfect microcontroller

FEATURE

46

T

up electronics and peripherals. But even then it’s a

wide field, so to narrow our focus a little it makes

sense to divide it up. On one side are SBCs that usually

run a fully fledged operating system such as Linux or

Android; on the other are ones that run bare-metal

code directly on a processor, such as the Arduino Uno.

Examples of the former are the Raspberry Pi, the

Beagle boards, or the Arduino Yún – and while they are

all amazing devices, they are a world away from the

microcontroller boards competing with the Arduino

Uno. Instead, the boards and platforms we’re bringing

you here are all microcontroller-based and run code in a

much more direct fashion, rather than through an OS.

There are a variety of processor families you will

commonly find in SBCs at our level, and they have

achieved their prominence over their competitors

either due to familiarity or because their manufacturers

have gone the extra mile to ensure that the support

they deliver makes their platform attractive. When you

pick a board for your project, it is as well to take a

Some less familiar boards can provide the power you need for your next project

PICKING

THE Perfect

MICROCONTROLLER

here’s a whole world of

microcontroller boards available to

hobbyists, yet the hobbyist scene is

dominated by just a few. Join us now

as we delve deeply into the world of

microcontrollers to find some lesser-

known gems you may not have noticed.

Before we start, what exactly are these single-board

computers, or SBCs, that we’re looking at? A very

simplistic answer might be that it is a computer which

combines processor, peripherals, and storage on a

single PCB, and can be run without additional

hardware. However, for most of the purposes you

might think of for single-board computers, it’s an

extremely broad definition. There are PC motherboards

with on-board flash storage that fit it, for example, but

they are light years away from an Arduino.

Generally when we think of an SBC, we’re imagining

a small and inexpensive computer board, usually one

with plenty of access to input/output pins for hooking

Jenny List

Jenny is the creator of

the @LanguageSpy

electronics kits for

Raspberry Pi and

ham radio. She’s

also a key member of

Oxford Hackspace.

@Jenny_Alto