Choosing MCU for a new project!

Other Hardware 3rd Party Boards
1

Hi all,

I have three (could be four, eventually) Arduinos in a room; each Arduino is doing "something" and output on it's own Serial port an int type of data (float, if it does matter).

Now I would like to develop a board that could "listen" simultaneously those devices and get those information on a display or SD card.

I made several custom board using the atmega328p-pu, but as far as I know it has only one Serial port.

Should I use something else (for example the 2560)? Or should I go with SoftwareSerial?

Also, DIP package is preferred because is very easy to design a board for it.

2

I can't see SoftwareSerial handling this, I would use a 2560 with hardware UARTs.

What speeds and how often do you need to "record" serial data?

3

Definitely 2560 with 4 UARTs.

4

Graynomad:
I can't see SoftwareSerial handling this, I would use a 2560 with hardware UARTs.

What speeds and how often do you need to "record" serial data?

Every 500ms would be good enough.

5

Budvar10:
Definitely 2560 with 4 UARTs.

Is it available in DIP package? Or something I could work on easily?

6

c0rsa1r:
Is it available in DIP package? Or something I could work on easily?

No. I thought you want use Arduino Mega2560. The 'biggest' DIL ATmega1284P has only 2 UARTs.

EDIT: I think, somebody offers minimalistic PCB with 2560.

7

Budvar10:
No. I thought you want use Arduino Mega2560. The biggest ATmega1284P is DIL but it has only 2 UARTs.

EDIT: I think, somebody offers minimalistic PCB with 2560.

Ok I think I'll work with the ATMEGA2560-16AU and develop the board with this chip. It will be a bit hard but hopefully it should work.

Thank you very much!

8

I think this ATmega2560 board at Tindie will suit your needs :slight_smile:

9

That is something like I thought. :slight_smile: