I used to play around with 8051 variants and 8pin/16pin PICs back in 2010, whats the equivalent beginner chips now? I have been out of touch since around 2012, except for pi3/4.
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Right now, I would suggest the ESP32 family… very well supported, lots of community, it’s quite a powerful MCU and you can find it for 3-5$ on Ali
I think ali doesnt work in my country. But is it something like this?
Whats the interface like? Would I need custom programmer boards? Serial com port etc?
What about compilers? I saw riscv mentioned in some places, so would gcc work?
In addition to what others have mentioned if you’re using Home Assistant or an MQTT environment than using the ESPHome tools can make life much easier.
You can also install MicroPython, and with it’s new and improved “mip” (pip for micropython) you can easily find drivers for most things. Micropython doesn’t support “threads” on the esp8266 as such, but can use uasyncio, which achieves the same goal.
You can find a lot of different dev boards with ESP32, like the one you mentioned. There is other with camera, e-paper screen drivers, smaller footprint (Xiao ESP32). The simplest way to program is using Arduino IDE, but I prefer using PlatformIO on VScode. GCC would work. The interface is with the USB port, which is used for COM port or for programming
The easiest way to program it would be using something like Esphome. I think Node Red is another tool that greatly simplifys things, but I haven’t had the time to mess with it yet.
Nowadays there’s a plethora of options available for beginners. Heck, even PICs have dev boards available with built-in programmers, so you connect it to your computer using regular old USB cable and you can build away using Microchip toolchains. Depending on your comfort level of low-level C, I’d probably still stay away from PICs as a beginner.
There’s Arduinos and all the numerous clones (cheaper, different features). The main benefit of Arduino ecosystem would be that it’s really easy to find libraries and/or content on the internet that gets you real close to solving your problems without having to write too much code yourself.
And of course very cost effective ESP32 based offerings that excel at wireless usecases (WiFi, bluetooth).
Recently there’s even more beginner friendly boards appearing using MicroPython where you don’t even need a toolchain. You connect the board to your computer, it appears as a mass storage device, you drop your Python code on it… and that’s it, the board runs the code when you disconnect from the computer.
Have a browse through Adafruit and Sparkfun stores to get an idea of all the possible (beginner friendly) boards out there.
3 years ago the obvious answer was Atmel AVR chips but they are still in short supply today. I think ESP32 is the answer today. They are shockingly powerful for the price. And they have built in wifi, bluetooth, and USB.
STM32, RP2040, ESP32 & AVR are all quite popular and all have good development boards.
