%META:TOPICINFO{author="MarcusWolschon" date="1020314522" format="1.0" version="1.1"}% %META:TOPICPARENT{name="Microcontrollers"}%

Err, maybe. PICs have the advantage of ubiquity and familiarity, but I find the lineup a little weak in terms of feature combos... yes you can get small PICs, or PICs with good amounts of memory, or flash PICs, or PICs with excellent UART options, but if you're looking for a small fast PIC with lots of flash memory... you tend to start flipping with a sinking feeling in your stomach through the very extensive "future products... maybe... when we get around to it" section of Microchip's catalog.

For chording keyboards in particular, the peculiarities of the PIC Harvard memory architecture start to bite you, in that there's no straightforward way to embed a large chord lookup table into the chip: you cannot access program memory as data so you can't insert tables into your code without some funky inefficient tricks.

There are some legitimate competitors, though. Atmel has some very comparable chips out there, for instance.

My personal favorite microcontroller at the moment is TI's MSP430 line. I haven't worked with them very much so far, but it has the advantage of a more contemporary instruction architecture and an across-the-board attention to minimal power requirements.

- Edward Keyes

-- MarcusWolschon - 02 May 2002