Hello, I was always curious about something I see a lot. A lot of control systems I’m seeing processors mostly using stm or pic and not microchip. I’m wondering why is that. I compare speed, temperature, programming space, pretty much everything and a lot of them line up with each other. I don’t get why people prefer stm or pic and not something like microchip processors. Now somewhere I read that microchip owns pic as well but I’m unsure of that.
Can someone please tell me why is this when it comes to production products they prefer that processor for?
I suspect that it's a personal preference. Somebody started making something and was familiar with certain microcontrollers so used those; as long as those microcontrollers are not limiting they will stick with them.
I "grew up" with PICs (reverse engineering 16C5x processors) and when I needed a microcontroller for projects I used these; being familiar with the programming of those I did stick with the PIC family for a long time.
@sterretje makes sense. I guess that’s when when one person sees it working and other person say hey it’s working with no problem I should tryout the same too. And goes on and on.
lol about pic is microchip. Thanks it does make sense.
@jim-p I did actually. I'm not a pic person. I just did a standard search on pic from mouser which i normally order from and Seeing almost difference in price. however the pic is higher then the samd21g18a processor I have been using lately which is on the arduino zero board. pic is about $7.35 USD and D21 is around $4.25 singles. in multiples pic is $6.10 and D21 is $3.21 USD. the specs might be not the same or close to same. I was just looking up in general pricing.
@horace I do not use esp32 or esp8266 in protection for my work they will not allow it becuase of wifi. I have myself never did anything production. I just mostly learn hardware wihich is my field and learning all I can and learn software which gives me headaches LOL.
you do not have to use the WiFi if it is not required for the project
the ESP32 has plenty of other functionality which is useful for engineering project, e.g. specify facilities depends of specific ESP32 series
The Arduino project has without doubt introduced many to microcontrollers, mainly Atmel, and made them accessible in a way that that was not available from other device manufacturers.
There may have been development kits, but for first timers maybe working outside the commercial or academic sectors, they could be hard work.
Going along the Arduino route at least gave many a start in what could be done and then maybe graduate to the trickier devices.
It's always tough to try to guess how popular particular processor families are in production products. It tends not to be advertised (no "AVR Inside" labels!), and in some cases is considered a trade secret.
(Once, when I was interested in PICs as a hobbyist, but working for a company that generally used large 32bit microprocessors, a Microchip salescritter called me up and offered to drop by my office for a visit. I did explain that my interest was mostly non-professional, but they came by anyway and told me things I hadn't known about just how many PICs our company used in "support" roles: temperature monitors, power supply sequencers, ... "Interesting.")
Be aware that "PIC" is highly ambiguous, encompassing 8bit PIC16 and (significantly different) PIC18 architectures, 16bit PIC24, dsPIC30 and dsPIC33C architectures, and 32bit PIC32 (MIPS), PIC32C (ARM), and dsPIC33A (new!) architectures.
Prices vary a lot, from less than $0.50 for small 8-bit PICs to about $30 for some of the larger dsPICs (digikey q1 prices.)
For a long time, the 8bit PICs were considered approximately comparable to the 8bit AVRs, and PICs were easier to get (as a hobbyist), but:
AVRs became more easily available.
They are less high-level-language friendly, and high-level programming became more "important."
There are no (or few) high-quality, free, compilers (in particular, no GCC.)
There is no C++ compiler.
There is an architectural limit of 4k of RAM. (new AVRs have more than that.)
Arduino doesn't run on 8bit PICs. (There is a core "ChipKit" for the PIC32)
one great advantage is cost - in the past microcontroller development boards could cost from hundreds to thousands of pounds
today a ESP32 dev board costs about £7 on EBAY in UK and a device board with ESP32, LoRa module and small display about £20-30, e.g. heltec wifi-lora-32-v3
Going back to the 80s - 90s, there was no easy route into microcontrollers.
I had a vague idea that they might be useful in some industrial automation I was working on, but that was about all.
I had to call in some favours to get any programming done. They might have been 80xx devices.
Everything was expensive then, including the few development kits. I was using RS and Farnell then, UK, and the cost of stuff was eye-watering. I remember crimping tools being £300 to £400. Now, a decent crimper is £20. It was prohibitively expensive to get started.
The ESP boards and the Arduino boards have changed all that. It has also got some of the others, STM etc., to appreciate that careers and device choice can start early in life and school pupils can become the buyers of the future.
@tigger back in the 90s and early 2000s my work used old controllers I don't remember which ones they was but they keep on burning out and I don't know why. It was cheaper to replace them with the same model then go to a different onces because of the cost. There was some flaw in the way they was powered up. I never know what was causing the ones that was burned out.
I left there in 2005 and they never fixed that problem. It was an add-on module that had a microprocessor on it 4 relays and other things. I was told to never touch it or figure out what was wrong with it so I never did. we replaced it at least 4 times a year. They keep a lot of spares.
intermittent problems are difficult to fix!
one which occurs every 4 months could be very difficult to fix!
never had anything as bad as that
once had a Raspberry Pi in a museum exhibit die on me after a few months - replaced it and been OK ever since (about four years)
The PIC16C84 was the first microcontroller with electrically eraseable program memory. It was introduced in 1993. Before that, experimenting with microcontrollers required expensive windowed packages, and a uv eraser.
(Or there was the parallax “basic stamp (92), capable of running BASIC from a serial eeprom at the blinding rate of about 1k statements per second, for only abou $100 (including “programming dongle” and host-side ide.)
“About $100” eval boards were the norm until Arduino came along and changed it to “about $30.” And then came China with cheap clones and the ESP chips…
Hello, Sorry I haven't been online much recently taking care of some health problem. I will update this post in a day or two. Thank you all for the help and information to understand from prototyping to production.
