A
Anonymous10/23/25, 19:15No.2952647/mcg/ - Microcontroller General: Massive Through-hole MCU Edition
Previous Thread: >>2928655
Here we discuss microcontrollers (MCUs), single board computers (SBCs), and their accessories, such as Atmel mega and tiny AVRs (Arduinos), PICs, ARM boards such as blue/black pill STM32, ESP8266/32s, RP2040, Raspberry Pi, and others.
For general electronics questions (power supplies, level shifting, motor driving, etc.) please ask /ohm/.
>where can I find verified quality microcontrollers and other electronic sensors or parts
digikey.com
mouser.com
arrow.com
newark.com
>but that's too expensive
aliexpress.com (many parts here are fake, particularly specific parts out of stock in the above sites)
lcsc.com
>I need a part that does X and Y, with Z specifications. How can I find it?
use DigiKey's or Octopart's parametric part search. Then purchase from one of the sellers listed above.
>how do I get started with microcontrollers, where should I start?
There is no defined starting point, grab a book and start reading or buy an arduino off ebay/amazon and start messing around. There are a plethora of examples online to get started.
>resources:
https://github.com/kitspace/awesome-electronics
>RISC-V microcontroller list:
https://codeberg.org/20-100/Awesome_RISC-V/raw/branch/master/RISC-V_MCU_development_boards.pdf
318
Replies
A
Anon10/24/25, 12:02No.2952826
Arduino is not cool. In fact it's fucking stupid in multiple ways.
A
Anon10/24/25, 14:17No.2952843
Which is the easiest SoM to build a PCB for and get it to work with an embedded linux? Aren't there any templates with the right footprints and conducting traces for a basic periphery? As well as a pre-configured embedded linux? I basically seek a starting point to jump off the development board onto the self-designed board.
A
Anon10/27/25, 20:37No.2953588
Putting esp32's on custom pcbs. What, pray tell, do I actually require to be able to use serial over USB? Supposably you need a quart/USB chip, but there is also mention of it being native to the esp32, pins 19/20?
A
Anon10/28/25, 17:05No.2953760
>work has 3 high school kids as interns for the week
>kid I'm assigned says he has thousands of hours in Warthunder and WoW
>hand him a box of microcontrollers, breadboards, and other electronic scraps and tell him to figure out how a transistor works
He was entertained for the entire day, and he can't wait to continue tomorrow.
A
Anon11/02/25, 19:22No.2954873
Stupid question: I bought a bunch of these weak laser diodes off Amazon a while back. I think they’re rated 3 to 5 volts. I was just using them with 3 volt coin batteries but I want to use them with an arduino project. Do I need a resistor or a transistor to connect them? If so what kind? Also, even dumber question: can I make them brighter somehow?
A
Anon11/03/25, 01:59No.2954982
A
Anon11/03/25, 08:57No.2955036
Did I fuck up my pcb design so psram (U11) sees noise?Long story short I making a cartridge for zx spectrum, and that thing has pico as well as PSRAM chip. Whenever I plug my custom ZX Spectrum cartridge in, the PSRAM starts spitting errors on a self test — even if the board’s powered by USB and the +5 V from the Spectrum is cut.ZX address/data lines (A0–A15, D0–D7, MREQ, RD, etc.) go through 74LVC245s for level shifting to 3.3 V. Spectrum ground is tied to the same plane as everything else on the board.If I cut A0–A7 lines from spectrum (by an adapter board), PSRAM self test passes. So it feels like the Spectrum’s bus noise or ground garbage is messing with the PSRAM/flash.gpt suggests the following– Separate ZX/buffer ground and tie it to main ground at one point?
– Add ferrite or resistors between ZX 3V3 and main 3V3?
– Series resistors on each ZX line?
– Some shielding or layout trick I’m missing?But I am just a beep boop guy I don't know this high rf woodoo magic. RP2350 runs at 280mhz, PSRAM is driven at around 100 and spectrum is only 3mhz.
A
Anon11/04/25, 17:19No.2955321
I'm planning to use an LMP91000 to measure signals from a 3-lead electrochemical cell. Has anyone here worked with the TIA or similar setups?
Is it easy to implement ?
A
Anon11/06/25, 16:24No.2955799
>work inna factory
>factory heavily dependent on compressed air
>we have 3 air compressors for this purpose
>no centralized controls for them
>me and coworker short of obsessed with optimizing their load/unload settings
>reached a point where we need to check if, and how often, a specific compressor unloads
>go no data collection in the compressor about this
>slap together a breadboard with an ESP32C3 and a SSD1306 to hook up to a NC switch on the compressor's main contactor
It simply counts how long it's been on for and how many times the contactor has shut off and prints it to the display. Gonna leave it over the weekend and see what it says.This microcontroller shit is useful. Glad I got into it recently.
A
Anon11/06/25, 17:07No.2955809
just ordered like 15 CH32V003 dev boards since they were under a dollar a piecedid I fuck up?
A
Anon11/06/25, 18:33No.2955822
>order random T48 set off of Amazon
>have to install the right libusb-dev to build minipro
>even worse fuckery trying to get it installed on an old Mac too, but I think I got it working
>try to run algorithm extract script
>it locks up in one of the steps to extract from the .exe
>have to fuck around with the script to get it to extract successfully
>finally get it working
>realize after all that fucking around that the algorithms were probably only needed for T56/T76 anyhow, but I don't care
>realize that it had a really old firmware on it
>more fucking around to find the appropriate update file
>get it updated from linux, no winderz were used during this
Anyhow, I was able to write to a little 12F519 chip that I had lying around, and read some random EPROMs.
A
Anon11/06/25, 19:10No.2955826
CH32V003J4M6's are pretty fucking nuts, price-wise.
A
Anon11/07/25, 01:04No.2955878
anyone here do any x86 assembly, specifically 64 bit? i know it's not a microcontroller isa but just asking.
A
Anon11/07/25, 09:29No.2955937
I finished a simple, two-day script to log data from an accelerometer with my arduino. It would have been one day, if not for some file on my SD that was broken and kept the getNextFileName() function in a loop.
I'll calculate how strong the acceleration forces are for the people who drive in my household, to see why they say I'm driving badly. This is to improve my driving skills, not to prove that they drive just as badly. No, I'm not resentful.
A
Anon11/09/25, 15:47No.2956369
quick question here: I'm trying to identify the pins of the micro usb port here, and it seems that VCC and GND are both connected to the circled connection. is that normal?
A
Anon11/09/25, 19:10No.2956444
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2198800/CRUMB_Circuit_Simulator/Anyone tried this?
A
Anon11/10/25, 01:51No.2956557
>mfw reading ARM assembly
A
Anon11/12/25, 20:23No.2957174
>this week on "Things That Compile with Absolutely Zero Fucking Complaints from -Wpedantic"...
A
Anon11/12/25, 21:25No.2957192
I AM THE KING OF THE MAGNETIC FIELD
THERE IS NO CHANGE IN MY LOCAL MAGNETIC FIELD THAT I CANNOT SENSEFEAR MY POWER
A
Anon11/15/25, 07:55No.2957727
Hello, noob question ahead:
I've never used microcontrollers, if I wanted to make a simple rechargeable (maybe) battery powered lcd timer (just a learning project) what board should I use? I think I have a chink arduino nano clone I bought on a whim lying around
A
Anon11/15/25, 13:07No.2957763
Well first, just know that LCD anything except for those common (mostly 2x20) displays is a pain in the ass.
But yeah, this sounds like a standard Arduino project. Start with something talking to the display, then get it counting time, then make it count the right way, then figure out how to hook it up to a battery bank.
The important thing is one step at a time. Don't try to do too many new things at once with hardware or you will get stuck and unable to figure out what's wrong. You don't go from zero to a 6502 computer or an MP3 player. Break it up into steps.
A
Anon11/16/25, 02:23No.2957924
Does anyone know why these types of drivers have separate +5V inputs for the pulse, direction and enable? I mean everyone seems to just wire them in parallel so why not just bridge them internally?
A
Anon11/16/25, 09:06No.2957974
What is the current software situation in general? I'm tired of broken vendor IDEs and bloated HAL libraries that eat up flash just to perform basic functions. Should I just throw out everything and deal with registers directly? GPIO is easy enough to get going but something like I2C is going to take a while to figure out on 32-bit micros.
I'm tempted to learn forth to avoid bloat and enjoy simple interactive development and ability to just connect over serial to develop without any special tools, even if I'm stranded at some remote location with nothing but bluetooth serial module and a phone.
Does anyone have experience in forth? Is it possible to develop reliable software with advanced features multitasking and using advanced peripherals like DMA? How do you even handle interrupts in forth? Can I even implement efficient digital filters in it? It seems to me it's only good for simple automation tasks, but it becomes very difficult to work with it if you want to develop advanced algorithms or deal with non trivial data structures.
A
Anon11/17/25, 17:02No.2958269
any1 know how I can get my mkl25z128 to not hardfault when there is a floating point specifier in sprintf (`sprintf(perkele, "ADC: %d , voltage: %.2f",adcval,voltag)`)
I tried using -u _printf_float in the linker option in keil but it says it does not recognize it. perkele is big enough.
A
Anon11/18/25, 01:29No.2958415
greetings.
attempting to make a genlockable analog sync generator using a EPM240 fpga, stumbed upon a problem with horizontal sync separaton - it doesn't play nice with vertical interval.
composite sync is pre-separated with LM1881 and is lowered from 5 to 3.3v via voltage divider.
fpga program in verilog simulates a one shot multivibrator with a timer, simulation seems to separate sync just fine but on hardware this happens.
is this a code issue or should i drop this idea altogether and use a regular flip-flop for that instead?
A
Anon11/18/25, 17:37No.2958553
Embassy is cute, Rust's stackless coroutines are the perfect fit for 32-bit MCUs.
A
Anon11/21/25, 05:26No.2959228
Now, I ain't really the type of guy who likes debating about programming languages since I just get excited by pressing a button and toggling an LED, but is there a Rust compiler for Atmega microprocessors? If so, is there a repository full of example programs for Arduino written on Rust?
A
Anon11/21/25, 11:40No.2959255
Hi guise, this is probably a noob question but here goes, I’m working on a midi interface thing on teensy and i want to add a little function that records a sequence of midi notes in real time and then loops it . Basic idea for the program is
>press record button (timer starts running from 0 onwards)
>if a midi message is received, note the time , the message type and the data in some sort of log
>when the
A
Anon11/21/25, 15:19No.2959285
Also fuck freenove for not protecting the 31st pin with a register in this example. The uC had it on OUT/High when I connected the RP to USB, and the potentiometer was all the way to the right, meaning I had a short. Everything is fine, but the potentiometer still smells like burnt plastic.
A
Anon11/22/25, 07:08No.2959434
im working on a project where i want to pair a mc to a raspi over bt to have it accept serial data and have it drive a cheapo usb display from that serial data. so far im playing with a raspi pico 2 w and its annoying as hell. i dont actually know if ill be able to drive the usb display at all yet because tinyusb is daunting and frankly all the documentation and examples for the rp2350 seem bad. are esp32 boards any better?
A
Anon11/26/25, 01:26No.2960184
>want to do a fire effect
>use tardunio because lazy and I don't want to setup my workspace on my new PC
>a few analog writes and random calls
>"error: you are using 120% of available code space"
I mean it is attiny13 but what is arduino dragging into the project to add that much overhead
A
Anon11/27/25, 04:17No.2960402
how dumb is this?
>put a fairly basic microcontroller battery, screen, accelerometer, and charger inside of a (reasonably small) SPENT bullet casing
>program the mcu to when shaken, it displays a random or randomly generated reddit comment on the screen
id think of it like a magic 8 ball, but instead of random wise 'thoughts', its the thoughts of mentally ill internet losers instead?
A
Anon11/28/25, 02:11No.2960582
Hi everyone, would like to consult your expertise,
do you have recommendations for automotive sector ? i already did some CAN loggers, looking for inspiration ,i'm also interested in the growing trend of automotive Ethernet , but documentation seems scarces, i would realy like to get into it tho...
A
Anon12/01/25, 10:46No.2961272
hello sars. I'm thinking of making a pull-up counter as my first project. The idea is sticking an esp32 + a module that detects movement on top of the pull up bar that sends the records to my server through wifi. What should I put in the aliexpress basket? Also, does this sound reasonable for a first project? I don't think it's too advanced, is it?
> previous exp
have done some esp32 projects in college (as a comp sci major) but my recollection is quite bad.
A
Anon12/02/25, 04:58No.2961468
Hallo SAAARS I wuz thinkin of making a grand total of 3 LEDs blinks cuz two is overdone and I want to use a non-deterministic machine learning-driven algorithm. Being as it is, alas, I was reincarnated in this life not as the son of a maharajah but as a poor sorghum farmer's illegitimate child, whence I must incur strong budget constraints and use the least expensive mu cee I can get my hands on.
Therefore I do beseech ye, my good sires, that ye may be of great aid unto me and that ye may recommend me a myoo cee available in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan at an extremely low price so as to engage in the endeavour I have in mind, not withstanding the constraint of being able to run something akin to TinyML.
A
Anon12/08/25, 01:32No.2963131
gonna be modding some old oem rcontrollers for use on pc (with gp2040-ce software) as a first project and I want to dremel out a spot for a usb c port so I can use the same cord for all my controllers. what's the best way to go about wiring a pico to an external port? been reading about how usb c to c isn't a good idea so I'm at a loss.
and are there any recommended aliexpress picos or should I just go for a legit ones? the reviews basically look good on this one aside from the wifi which I don't care about anyway. open to other suggestions though if there's a known good chinese brand.
A
Anon12/09/25, 05:43No.2963430
I was wondering why esp32s arent used in commercial applications and turns out they are used. You cant beat that price if it needs wifi and or bluetooth. Its too powerful.
A
Anon12/11/25, 14:32No.2963961
Has qualcomm ruined arduino yet?
A
Anon12/11/25, 20:17No.2964030
This piece of shit won't work properly no matter what I do. Wired the address pin to vcc but still the i2c scanner example from arduino detects a device only every few attempts, and the address on which it is varies a bit. What do
A
Anon12/12/25, 02:18No.2964091
Bros, I need a SBC for automotive applications (it will sit in my glovebox and handle dashcams + multimedia).
Here's what I need:
>Can handle two IMX678 at full tilt forever (12 bit, 60FPS, 4k)
>Do openCV on top
>Has enough connectivity for additional modules like GPS, accelerometer, etc.
>Runs fanless (cannot have a fire go off in my glovebox)
>Is energy efficient (needs to not drain my battery)
I'm not trying to find a unicorn that does all that and costs just 20 bucks, but I won't buy a 1000€+ SBC for proof of concept for a 4000€ shitbox.I've got a few Rock Pi 4B+ sitting here, but they have only a single CSI connector each.
A
Anon12/13/25, 17:08No.2964399
Why did nobody tell me that jumper wires are unsolderable and I would waste hours debugging my UART?
A
Anon12/14/25, 16:29No.2964631
I'm planning to wire an ultrasonic sensor to a small box with a screen that my parents can use to monitor their wastewater tank. For this, I'm looking for an assembly that has a microcontroller (virtually any) and a screen. I was thinking OLED. Does anyone know a good assembly I could use for it? I really don't care if it's a cheap atmel, esp32 or rp2040 or anything else.
A
Anon12/14/25, 20:32No.2964713
im trying to solder some shit into a pcb but the pin that goes into the pcb rings is very small and doesnt fully get past the pcb (like in right example of pic related)can it still be soldered?
A
Anon12/18/25, 14:22No.2965633
Way late in the thread. Thinking of diving into embedded.Anyone have a link to getting Vim set up for embedded C with the stm32?I do all of my other coding in Vim, and I was hoping to not have to learn a new ide while I'm doing blinky lights and hello world.>webm unrelated (a little game i programmed)
A
Anon12/18/25, 20:00No.2965698
Is it bad practice to only line-drive uart start and zero-bits on a rs485 line and not the one-bits because i can't distinguish between a one-bit and idle that comes out of the uart. It will work this way but i'm curious if this is common practice.
A
Anon12/21/25, 02:11No.2966062
I didn't wanna spent $700 on a datalogger
Now 2 years later I have onboard laptimes, tachometer, and a dataviewing tool2 years ago I was just a software guyHardware is fun and magical
A
Anon12/24/25, 01:57No.2966749
are these examples written by chat gpt or am I missing something
https://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/DeviceDoc/Atmel-7701_Automotive-Microcontrollers-ATtiny24-44-84_Datasheet.pdf
page 19 memories sectionBoth (0<<EEPM1)|(0<<EEPM0) and (0<<EEPM1)|(0>>EEPM0) are zero, they make zero sensethey were supposed to be 1<< I imagine
A
Anon12/24/25, 16:48No.2966844
Also it is a weird code no matter what 0<<x makes zero sense. If you want to clear all bits then just set it to 0 which would make assembly code's intent more clear. if you want to clear specific bits then common idiom is &= ~(1u << bit1 | 1u << bit2) and assembly equivalent. There is no such thing as 0 << x
A
Anon12/24/25, 20:49No.2966881
doin a smartchair and need to know if MQ5 is a good gas sensor for fart?
A
Anon12/27/25, 21:07No.2967427
I need to generate two outgoing PWM signals (with potentially different frequencies) and monitor a third incoming PWM signal. For this reason I thought to use different timers for PWM generation (TIM5, TIM9). Should I use yet another timer for monitoring the incoming PWM signal or can I re-use TIM5 or TIM9 for that? I noticed there's a Combined Channels mode on TIM5.
A
Anon12/27/25, 21:39No.2967442
Instead of trying to do everything at the same time, maybe you could try doing each signal one at a time until you've got something that works at all, then combine them.
A
Anon12/28/25, 09:16No.2967556
I'm looking at laboratory/benchtop PSUs and need a new one, I assume I should get a linear one this time because I want to work with high speed boards / communication devices?
A
Anon12/28/25, 17:11No.2967603
I have an attiny84 and trying to make a buzzer using pwm.I set my pwm via CTC mode like following code. And I can control frequency via prescaler and OCR0ANow I want to also set a duty cycle so I can control volume. I enabled interrupt and I will toggle a BUZZER_PIN via interrupt as needed. From what I understand, this is the only way?Right now I am toggling BUZZER_PIN on each interrupt and you can see the result in oscilloscope. Yellow line is output of PWM and purple one is BUZZER_PINWhat I don't get it why PWM is a smooth square while BUZZER_PIN is not. You can see that it is slowly dipping instead.are PWM just faster at toggling pins or am I missing something here? PORTA ^= (1 << BUZZER_PIN) in interrupt is not toggling the pin as good[code]
#define BUZZER_PIN PA0
ISR(TIM0_COMPA_vect) {
PORTA ^= (1 << BUZZER_PIN);
}int main(void)
{
DDRB |= (1 << PB2) | (1 << BUZZER_PIN);TCCR0A = (1 << WGM01) | (1 << COM0A0);
TCCR0B = (1 << CS00) /*| (1 << CS01)*/;
TIMSK0 |= (1 << OCIE0A);
OCR0A = 125;
sei();while(1);
}
[/code]
A
Anon12/29/25, 19:26No.2967869
Got the outdoor furnace controlled by HASS
A
Anon01/01/26, 19:44No.2968448
Eat and poop simulator
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Fk11Tw_AbFA
A
Anon01/07/26, 00:10No.2969452
This is about USB I hope it's right here.
I'm building a power bank solution based on IP2368. IP2366 does not behave any different. It works great but for one issue: It wont supply a dumb load 5V. The datasheet makes no mention of it. Do I have to do funny stuff with resistors on datalines? Does everything need an e-marker now? Would it then make sense to just slap a 'decoy' chip on the board next to the IP2368? Annoyingly I would then need to disable it for regular USB loads.
What do? I need it for a light.
A
Anon01/08/26, 03:11No.2969699
Should I invest in an ultrasonic cleaner? Feeling like a retard using alcohol and q tips desu senpai.
A
Anon01/12/26, 22:08No.2970487
So, I want to build robots to use in a stage play. They need to move with some precision, not that much, keeping position within 1 foot of where they should be would be ok
my idea is a combination of DWM3000 and magnetometer
the thing is these DWM3000s are quite pricey, and I would need like 5 (3 for anchors and 2 for robots)anyone knows some cheaper alternatives? accelerometer tracking has a ton of drift, and wheels with tachometers have a tendency to slip and fuck the tracking
A
Anon01/13/26, 03:13No.2970541
I'm planning on putting together a relatively simple esp32 mp3 player using a semi self contained DAC IC as a first project. Looking at an open source project of something similar has a separate microcontroller dedicated to running the clock signal. When I asked my friend and chatgpt they said that the esp32 master clock is kinda shit and is bad for audio purposes due to jitter caused by the wifi /bt modules. If this is true, would it be possible to buy a stripped down esp32 without any wifi/bt connectivity and run the DAC on the esp32 master clock without any potential issues or should i just man up and figure out how to do it with 2 microcontrollers?
A
Anon01/16/26, 23:17No.2971220
It turns out the LLMs are not very good at Pi Pico embedded stuff so I need to actually write the damn code myself.
Conceptually, is it going to be hard if I want to use DMA to have a PIO constantly write its output into a ring buffer that can be queried from elsewhere? Does anyone have any good examples? I'm a micropython babby so I think I will need to configure registers directly with mem32
A
Anon01/17/26, 11:01No.2971308
Maxed out muh I/O
A
Anon01/24/26, 20:17No.2972752
I found a few 8052 clones in a nameless control board at the e-waste bin at work, my boss said I can keep them as desolder the chips at work. Should I bother? What are the chances they're working? It did rain this week and the bin is outside.
A
Anon01/27/26, 17:17No.2973174
anybody has any idea about adding cellular. i have a fleet management project in mind and need cellular, and I know i can get an eSIM for IoT for like 10buck for the year and they give a QR code or smth, but can't find proper answers on the types of chips, how to get the info into the chpi, eUICC for the sim, etc. Anybody has interesting sources or useful info?
A
Anon01/29/26, 00:37No.2973416
i'm going to use a digistump permanently in a project and you can't stop me
