Re: Electronics Projects and PC Interfacing

[Tim McDonough <tmcdonough@gmail.com>]

Nothing wrong with the PIC series at all. I'm not sure they have any 
"cooler features" when compared to the AVR. I've used quite a few PIC 
and Atmel parts both over the years. Hardware wise I think it's a toss 
up between the two and both have lots of commercial and hobbyist type 
support.

The biggest advantage the AVR series have over the PIC in my opinion is 
the free AVR-GCC toolchain. There is no port of GCC for the PIC due to 
the architecture whereas you can have C, C++, Java, etc. for the AVR 
free for the downloading. The least expensive, well supported C compiler 
for the PIC runs around $200 for a command line version. More for an IDE 
that interfaces with the Microchip environment to get the debugger, etc.

Tim

Danny Sauer wrote:

> Is there any particular reason not to investigate the cooler features on
> the 8-bit PIC microcontrollers?  There are flash memory PICs that can
> directly speak at RS232 levels, included buffered UARTs, have USB
> interfaces available, etc.  You can get them for single-digit prices
> from places like Digikey, and there's zillions of tutorials out there
> with different examples.


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