Questions from a complete newbie

Well, i may be a newbie to Arduino... but I'm definately NOT a newbie to microcontroller work: I've been doing it professionally for 34 years... I even started with thr very first micro, the Intel 4004!

I ran across Arduino recently, and I think the project and development environment and language adaptation is very cool... I'd love to start using it in professional work.

However, the AVR micro isn't necessarily the best choice for many of the things I do... for very low power apps, the TI MSP430 would be a far better choice.... for high precision analog, the Analog Devices stuff (ARM7 or ARM9 based) or Silicon Labs stuff (8051-based) might be better.... for extreme low end, low pin count stuff, the PIC products might be preferred (there's also the sometimes arbitrary preferences of my clients).

I'm wondering if the language, especially the libraries, can be ported, or have been ported, to other microcontroller families? Since most micros these days are supported by a C compiler and thier own IDE, I'd guess that porting to a different micro family wouldn't be all that hard... just the drivers for the very lowest level routines, related to specific micro family differences, would need to be adapted.

Can anyone tell me if this has been done, and if so, for what micorcontrollers.... and where it might be obtained, if it exists?

Thanks in advance, for any replies!

http://arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoardDuemilanove ATmega168
http://arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoardMega ATmega1280
http://arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoardLilyPad ATmega168V

Google:
Sanguino
Teensyduino

Some more, I'm sure.

I think the important phrase here is:-

to other microcontroller families

And the answer is no. It's down to the compiler.

P.S. Been doing it before the 4004 :stuck_out_tongue:

P.S. Been doing it before the 4004

doing things on pocket calculators doesn't count. The world began with the 8008 :wink:

doing things on pocket calculators doesn't count. The world began with the 8008

It was developed before I started work at my refinery in 1979, but they had a homegrown fuel dispenser (gas pump billing system for inside fuel consumption of company vechiles) build around the Intel 4004 chip set. Kept working for around 20years when finally replaced with a commercial turnkey system. So some people and companies were using the 4004 chip set on their own for other then calculators.

Lefty

I think the important phrase here is:-

to other microcontroller families

/me is blind :-[

I have seen a project that ports the Arduino framework to the ARM mcu family, but I can't remember the name of that project right now. They are also using gcc...

you can also have a look at this board which is at least pin-compatible with the Arduino:
ARMmite PRO

I hope that the Arduino project will support other mcu families in the future. But I guess we will have to wait since it is not even possible to include support for the Atmel ATtiny family in the official release.