Where do I start  in embedded?

Hi James,

I would suggest the cypress Semiconductor PSOC 4 family.

They have a great free development IDE plus they have programmable hardware for digital and analog circuits.

They have a great range of projects integrated into the IDE so you can follow step by step examples as you learn more about digital and analog circuits and how you can integrate them into the software.

There are also a lot of beginners electronic circuit kits that you can add as you get more comfortable working with the circuits.

DAB

You can go to the very metal with that Arduino that you have. There's no need to invest.

I would like to take the arduino out of the equation if possible. that way I could get the clock speed of the avr or pic just trying to find a good set of courses or something that can make it easier to learn.

The PSoC4 (programmable system-on-a-chip) includes an ARM Cortex M0 which is much faster than an Arduino.

The PSoC4 Prototyping Kit ($4) is also much cheaper than an Arduino.

Both systems have a free Integrated Development Environment. The PSoC IDE includes peripheral software drivers (including source code) for the system-on-a-chip.

There is a new PSOC5 Prototyping Kit (for about $10) which is even more powerful (includes an ARM Cortex M3)

I think the PSoC5 is a better kit because it includes a proper programmer/debugger (that can also be used with the PSoC4)

There are lots of You Tube videos and the following projects provide great examples of how to implement real functionality:

100 Projects in 100 Days

100 projects in 100 days | Cypress

Caveat: PSoC4 and PSoC5 are great chips, but the PSoC Creator environment you need to design with them only runs on Microsoft Windows.

Good point John, I'm not a big fan of Windows, especially not 8.1, but there have always been orders of magnitude more programs that run on Windows than any other OS. If we refuse to use Windows, we have to give up a lot of choice and some productivity. The situation is improving steadily with more software running on other platforms and OS's, and deteriorating a bit with older software not running on new Windows and an ever increasing epidemic of malware, but everyone must weigh the trade-offs for their own requirements. For me, I just want to use the most productive and most powerful tools I can find, so I will have to keep a Windows machine around to run PSoC Creator and other key software - for a while. (I hear some people are running Creator in a virtual machine, but I have no Idea how effective that is)

I have noticed more books and material for the pic mcu but more community support for the avr could someone recommend a structured or semi-structured course on one or the other.

Hi James - it must be irritating when you ask the way to Tippperary and everyone says why not go to Dublin instead !

If funds are short and you have the Pickit 3 then go with Pics - Microchip offer  a huge range of parts at reasonable prices and with good hardware and software support. Lots of app notes and still many parts in DIY friendly DIL packages.

You don't say what you want to do but here's a fun part: http://www.microchip.com/wwwproducts/Devices.aspx?product=PIC24HJ128GP502

You can get it in DIP and you get free tools if you like.

There are loads of simple Pic projects on the web (you can start with a much simpler one than the PIC24....

I wouldn't bother with a course - think of  a (simple) project and have a go.

MK

Hello James where are you located. A lot of people here I'm sure have LOTS of extra kit lying around that they might be happy to share, I know I do...

Kas