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Microcontrollers for motor control/wireless communication

G

gregulator

Senior member
I have been out of the loop for a couple years in the fun world of micro controllers was wondering what people are leaning towards these days for devices and tools? I used to do a lot of programming with Microchip devices for basic applications and have used a Nordic chip (with a 8051 on board) for some wireless communication.

I am familiar with the MPLAB environment but wouldn't mind trying something new. The project will include DC motor control (maybe steppers), and some wireless control. I would love to keep the dev board costs down. Any suggestions on platforms, and places to buy? AVR, ARM, MSP430??? Thanks!!!
 
What about Gumstix boards? I think they have wireless versions available.

For motor control, as long as you have a serial port you can use an all-in-one solution that contains the motor and driver circuitry in one package. These MDrives are controlled using an RS485 interface.

I can't really recommend a particular controller since my experience is limited to the Microchip PIC24H series.
 
I'm only repeating what I've read elsewhere, I really know nothing about the hardware side. But from what I've read casually, Arduino is the platform people are raving about right now for prototyping.

http://www.arduino.cc/

It's open source and sounds like it's compatible with a range of hardware, including wireless controllers.
 
I very much prefer AVRs over the other 8bit options... Open source compiler and programmers are one nice part. 4x faster than PIC clock for clock, too. (not that that matters much for servo control...)

If you're on the cheap, you hardly need a dev board, just some breadboard is fine, once you get a programmer. If you don't want to make your own, the avr isp (usb) programmer is a whole $35 or so.


I've got one of these dev boards, they're quite reasonably priced IMO. The onboard programmer only works in windows though (so I use an external homebrew one in nix)

If that's too much for you, and you can solder, you can get one of these kits. It's desgined to sit on atmel's "dragon" which is a (~$50 iirc) programmer that also does JTAG and parallel programming, as opposed to just ISP. Of course you can use a normal ISP programmer with this board as well.

If you go this route, just ask me if you need some help with something.
Also there is http://www.avrfreaks.net/ , a forum dedicated to them - there's a section of the site with user submitted projects, libraries, details on most all of the dev boards and such available.
 
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