Jay Carlson gathered 21 different microcontrollers — all less than $1 — to find out which ones were good in various applications.
These MCUs were selected to represent their entire families — or sub-families, depending on the architecture — and in my analysis, I’ll offer some information about the family as a whole.
If you want to scroll down and find out who the winner is, don’t bother — there’s really no sense in trying to declare the “king of $1 MCUs” as everyone knows the best microcontroller is the one that best matches your application needs. I mean, everyone knows the best microcontroller is the one you already know how to use. No, wait — the best microcontroller is definitely the one that is easiest to prototype with. Or maybe that has the lowest impact on BOM pricing?
I can’t even decide on the criteria for the best microcontroller — let alone crown a winner.
What I will do, however, is offer a ton of different recommendations for different users
Check out the contenders, the cores used and the results in the article here.
Adafruit has had paid day off for voting for our team for years, if you need help getting that going for your organization, let us know – we can share how and why we did this as well as the good results. Here are some resources for voting by mail, voting in person, and some NY resources for our NY based teams as well. If there are additional resources to add, please let us know – adafruit.com/vote
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