Microchip did purchase Atmel. I'm sure that is why so many of the AVRs are no longer available. The idea was to kill the competition.
PICs are an interesting breed. Its a pug-ugly instruction set; however, it seems to be shockingly efficient. Programs are always very small when compared to the same application on another processor. They are also very rugged and dirt cheap.
I expect that is true. :)
PICs are an interesting breed. Its a pug-ugly instruction set; however, it seems to be shockingly efficient. Programs are always very small when compared to the same application on another processor. They are also very rugged and dirt cheap.
I *HATE* PIC's instruction set and weird architecture, but you are right, they are very cheap, they work well, and that's why I use them in a lot of the stuff I make.
I have long preferred assembly, but in the last couple of years i've started writing in C++. I've been using the DSPPIC33fj128. It's instruction set is too massive and it's architecture too full of peculiarities to bother trying to do it in assembly.
I like C well enough, and i've gotten them to work pretty well doing various things.
One of the things I had worked on and gotten working decently is sending audio long distance (several miles) through the 900 mhz ISM band, using the RFM69HCW transciever module. The intent was to use it as a voting receiver system for a Fire Department with multiple stations acting as remote receiver sites.
All the audio was to be routed to a central controller that decided which received audio signal would be sent out through the repeater.
The whole things was relatively cheap compared to what you could buy commercially, and with no reoccurring phone line costs, which is the normal way to implement a voting receiver system, or at least it used to be. I'm not sure what people are doing now.
My main work has been in radio communications.