I think the appeal is that the size corresponds with the price tag. Though not always the case, smaller stuff == cheaper.

My first set was an Elegoo Arduino Uno Super Starter Kit I got second hand for 25€. A mega good deal considering that the real deal costs, just the board alone, 20€. Some of the parts in the kit sucked though.

Then I got the esp32c3 super mini for 1,07€. If anyone wants to start out with microcontrollers, it's the board I recommend. The Arduino IDE supports it and it works out of the box. I think it's 60 cents more if you want the pins pre-soldered.

I don't recommend atmega stuff! For what they are, they're not as cheap as the alternatives. For example, an attiny85 costs between 2-3,5€. The stm8s001 costs less than 1€ a piece and has 2x the clock speed, 2x the RAM and 2 16-bit timers, which is 2 more than the ATTINY, which has none.

#maker #atmega #stm #arduino #esp

@r @fluffykittycat @flower Obviously people have used the #RP2040 for many projects and given it's ease of programming, low price, excellent documentation and easy availability it's no wounder it does put pressue on #ATmega / #ATtiny, #Arduino, #Teensy, etc.

• At least for low volume productions and prototypes as proof of concept.

#RaspberryPi shure are more and more targeting #embedded & #industrial clients given they do in fact disrupt the market as one can get proper #documentation and #tools without paying $$$$ upfront (AND sign NDAs) just to be able to boot #Linux on it.

• And competitors fail at understanding that this makes #Broadcom look good and is their entry-way into acquiring new clients. Because selling hardware purely off specs may work in #amd64 land where shit's legacy and the way things work is so entrenched that basic stuff just works as in booting. #ARM and even #ARM64 fail at having that level of #standardization.

OFC the #Pi0 / #Pi0W / #Pi0W2 doesn't need to innovate since every competitor isn't even trying to compete but merely farting out boards with 0 documentation and some halfassed boot images and no post-sales support so they keep dominating by virtue of being the only ones that just work...