Which Microcontroller Is Right for You?
Deciding which microcontroller (MCU) to use can seem a little overwhelming. Join Robin Mitchell - an engineer with experience working with the most popular MCUs - in a tour of what MCUs are on offer, their pros and cons, and how easy they are to program.
The video focuses on the microcontrollers themselves, but most MCUs come with dedicated development boards to go alongside them. For example, the Arduino Uno is so ubiquitous that it frequently gets referred to as simply "a microcontroller."
Other boards like the Nordic Semiconductor Nrf52 Dev Kit or the Mikroe MCU card for STM32 provide convenient packages for prototyping with an MCU before incorporating the hardware into a PCB design.
There are also evaluation kits for the Pic and STM-8, but by far the easiest dev board to get started with is the Raspberry Pi Pico, which can act as a USB host that accepts python scripts.
Which MCU do you love working with the most? Let us know in the comment section of the video!
Ian Buckley is a writer, musician, and perpetual tinkerer. Commonly found surrounded by hobby electrical components, he's also a keen programmer and likes to build crazy-sounding instruments with microcontrollers. In addition to Electromaker, Ian writes over at MakeUseOf and has bylines at the likes of Online Tech Tips as well as Help Desk Geek.
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