Microcontrollers have been playing a key role in building equipment right from household to industrial usage. It’s simplicity, easy to learn and usage has made this a best choice to build projects, prototype or products. With the growth in development boards prototyping using microcontrollers has become even easier. This enabled a lot of hobbyists, enthusiasts and engineers to build innovative and amazing projects on their own. On the other hand availability of humongous amount of microcontrollers lead many enthusiasts to confusion on what to choose and how to choose. To help those we have we have compiled a list of popular microcontrollers based on following criteria
Popularity
Community
Development boards
Usage
9. ESP8266:
ESP8266 is a low-cost Wi-Fi module powered by 32-bit Tensilica microcontroller. The cost of this microcontroller is around $2. Refer the datasheet for this microcontroller.
Features:
Clock Frequency- 24 to 52MHz
External Flash – 1MB
Operating Voltage – 2.5V to 3.6V
Operating Current – 80mA, sleep mode-20uA
Number of ADC pins – 1
Number of PWM pins – 4
802.11 b/g/n protocol
GPIO pins – 17
RAM – 80KB user data and 32KB instruction RAM
ADC Resolution – 10-bit
Communication protocols – SDIO 2.0, SPI, UART
I/O source current – 12mA (max)
Programming Software:
Arduino IDE
AT commands
Development board:
ESP8266 Development board
8. MSP430G2452
MSP430G2452 has a powerful 16-bit RISC CPU manufactured by Texas Instruments MSP430 family. The cost of this microcontroller is around $2. Check out the datasheet of this Microcontroller.
Low-Frequency Oscillator-32-kHz Crystal and also external Digital Clock Source
SRAM – 256kB
Active Mode Power consumption – 220microA at 1MHz
Programming Software:
Energia IDE
DIP socket
Development board:
MSP-EXP430G2 LaunchPad TI Development Board
7. nRF52832:
Nordiac nRf52832 is an ARM Cortex-M4 CPU. This is a mid-range member of nRF52 series SoC family. The cost is around $6. It is mainly used for ULP wireless applications and has become quite famous for it. Refer the datasheet of this microcontroller.
Features:
Operating Frequency – 2.4 GHz
Maximum Data rate – 2Mb/s
Output power – 4dBm
Operating Voltage – 1.7V to 3.6V
Flash – 512kB
RAM size – 64kB
Communication protocols – I2C, SPI, UART
Number of input/output pins – 32
ADC Resolution – 12 bit
Data Bus Width – 32bit
ADC channels – 8
Timers – 5 (32bit)
Programming Software:
Zigbee Software
Keil MDK A
Development board:
nRF52832 Development Board
6. ATMEGA32U4-AU:
It is an 8-bit MCU AVR RISC based microcontroller from Microchip. This Microcontroller comes in two different packages. This Microcontroller is priced under $5. Refer to ATMEGA32u4 datasheet.
Features:
Maximum Clock Frequency – 16MHz
Supply Voltage – 2.7V to 5.5V
Number of input/output pins – 26
Flash Memory Size – 32kB
RAM size – 2.5kB
Number of PWM pins – 14
Number of Timers – 5
PWM Resolution- Programmable from 2 to 16 bits
Number of ADC pins – 12
ADC Resolution – 10
Communication protocols-I2C, I2S, SPI, USART, USB
On chip temperature sensor
Programming Software:
Arduino IDE
Platform IO
Development board:
Pro Micro Atmega32u4-AU motherboard
Pro Micro Leonardo R3
5. PIC16F877A:
PIC16F877A is an 8-bit controller from PIC family microcontrollers. The cost of this microcontroller is around $4. Refer the datasheet of this controller.
Features:
Total number of Pins – 40
Total number of ports – 5 (port A, port B, port C, port D, port E)
Operating Voltage – 2 to 5.5V
Number of input/output pins – 33
Number of ADC pins – 14
ADC Resolution – 10-bit
Number of Comparators – 2
Number of timers – 3
Communication protocols – UART, SPI, I2C
External Oscillator – up to 20Mhz
Program Memory – 14KB
RAM – 368 bytes
EEPROM – 256 bytes
Max PWM resolution – 10
Support both hardware pin and timer interrupts
Pogramming Software:
PICPgm
MP lab
Development board:
PIC Development Board
4. ATtiny85:
ATtiny85 is an 8-bit AVR microcontroller based on RISC CPU and is introduced by Microchip. The price of this controller is around $2. which is affordable to try it for any simple projects. Refer to ATtiny85 datasheet here.
Features:
Total number of pins – 8
CPU type – RISC 8-Bit AVR
Operating Voltage – 1.8 – 5.5V
Program Memory – 8K
RAM Memory – 512Bytes
EEPROM Memory – 512Bytes
ADC Resolution – 10-Bit
Number of ADC pins – 4
Number of Comparators – 1
GPIO’s – 6
No of Timers – 2 8-bit timers
Communication Protocols- SPI, I2C, and USART.
Number of PWM pins – 4
Maximum oscillator speed – Up to 20MHz
Programming software:
Tiny AVR Programmer
Arduino IDE
Development board:
ATtiny85 Mini USB board
3. ESP32:
ESP32 is a low cost and power on a chip microcontroller with integrated Wi-Fi and dual-mode Bluetooth. This microcontroller is created and developed by Espressif Systems. It is powered by Tensilica Xtensa LX6 microprocessor. It costs around $3. Refer the ESP32 datasheet.
Features:
Operating Voltage – 2.2V to 3.6V
Available in two packages
Total number of pins – 48
GPIO pins- 34
CPU speed – 240MHz
Internal SRAM – 520kB
External Flash – 4MB
11b/g/n Wi-Fi transceiver and Bluetooth 4.2/BLE
Internal ROM- 448KB
ADC channels – 18
Number of DAC channels – 2
Communication protocols – 3 UART , 4 SPI, 2 I2C and 2 I2S.
Communication speed – 5Mbps
It has 8KB RTC Fast memory and 8KB Slow memory
Programming software:
Espressif IoT Development Framework(IDF)
Platform IO Ecosystem and IDE
Arduino IDE
Development board:
ESP32 S2
ESP32-PICO KIT
2. ATmega328:
It is a 8-bit AVR Microcontroller manufactured by Microchip. This microcontroller is priced around $3. It has an advanced RISC architecture and became very famous after the introduction of Arduino Uno. Refer the datasheet here.
Features:
Operating Voltage – 1.8V to 5.5V
Program Memory – 32KB
CPU Speed (MIPS/DMIPS) – 20
Digital Communication Peripherals – 1-UART,2-SPI, 1-I2C
SRAM – 2KB
EEPROM – 1KB
ADC Operation pins – 8
It has 3 builtin Timers – 2 of 8bit and 1 of 16bit
ADC Resolution – 10bit
PWM pins – 6
Number of Analog pins – 6
Number of Digital pins -14
Programming software:
Arduino IDE
PlatformIO
Eclipse Arduino IDE
Development board:
Arduino Uno
1. STM32F103C8T6:
It is a 32-bit microcontroller from STMicroelectronics. It is based out of Cortex-M3 CPU Core architecture. It has become quite famous among enthusiasts for their low power consumption and sheer computational power. This controller costs around $1.80 per unit. Refer to the datasheet here.
Features:
Clock frequency – 72 Mhz.
Operating Voltage – 2.0 to 3.6v
Communication protocols – 2 I2C channels, 2 SPI channels, 1 CAN bus, 2 USART, 1USB.
Internal Flash – 64KB
Number of Analog pins – 10
Number of PWM pins – 15
Quantization Level – 4096
SRAM – 20KB
GPIO’s – 32
ADC Resolution – 12bits
PWM Resolution – 16bit
Debugging – Serial, JTAG.
IDE:
Atollic True Studio
STM32CubeIDE
Programming Software:
STM32CubeProgrammer
Keil U-Link 2
Arduino IDE
Development board:
Blue Pill
Hope this article would have helped you pick microcontroller that suit your project. If you feel any other famous microcontroller is left out from this list. Do let us know about it in comment box below, we will add it to our list.
