PIC's AVR's, HC11 ADCu812 ,etc in detectors

[BJ]

Hi folks!

I have been foolowing Carls and Holooks digital
design efforts and the following discussion
about MCU's to use for MD's.

This summer during 2002 i designed a MD around
the 5521 IC from philips what a damm neat singel
chip MD it went out to be. So then i started the
Digital MD project after his nice description of
the project he runs and its progress.
But since i have zero kowledge in programming
there was a lot of whoe's and wheee's about the
whole thing.

I started out with the HC811 but gave up since
MOT decided to do EOL of that Devicet, then i
swapped over to PIC16F887 that i "tought was
easy which is not and got upset when i found
out the "crap" bank switching sceme! Pic to the
dust bin, then i swapped over to the ATMEGA16
because of the exellent AVR studio tools but
i trowhed up at the 136 instructions??

I tought RISC stod for "reduced, not extended!!

But by sheer coincidence i found out about the
MSP430 from TI! I jumped directly for that one
because:

1:Extrodinary low power! (Battery saving).
2:Unbelieveable simple to program, 27
instructions, very clean and straightforwad
core design.

3:12 bit ADC allmost automatic. 1lsb
(not the best but its there anywhay!)
But there are devices whit 14bit ADC!
(so that would perhaps satisfy Carl and
Hoolok!!)

4:MSP430F148 has MAC unit!! (Horray,DSPing for
MD signals) this is great for Pi or odinary
detecting, the Mul unit does 16 by 16 mul
with 32 bit result wich "would" eventually
satisfy for PI detectors!!

5:A decent dev kit including fully functioning
C compiler(4k limited) but assembler has no
limitation. GCC available allready for those
who code in C.

6: The machine is a 16bitter and its placed
in the cheapo range of the PICs and AVR's.

After initial Dev tool setup bug i had written
my first program in less then 2 ohurs, this
would not have happend to me with any of the
other mcus! This is no TI advertising it is BJ
advertising because can a goof like me who has
never programed before write a working program
in less then 2 ohurs from scratch with all what
that means in reading manuals,learning
instruktions, etc etc etc. There must be
something neat with the damned thing!!!

Yes, there is minuses as well with the MSP430
and the manuals are somewhat messy but it so
damned simple to program!

Have it for a try, free samples and cheap
starter kits are available. Simply order from
TI!

REG
BJ

[Robert Hoolko]

Re: PIC's AVR's, HC11 ADCu812 ,etc in detectors

BJ

I took a quick look at the MPS430f147. The CPU seems to be fast enough and it has a good CPU architecture without bottlenecks. If I understood the ADC it looks like it can do about a 300 kHz conversion rate though I could not find that number anyplace. This chip looks like it would be good for metal detectors. It is even fast enough to do a lot of it in C.

Robert

[BJ]

Re: PIC's AVR's, HC11 ADCu812 ,etc in detectors

>The CPU seems to be fast enough and it has a >good CPU architecture without bottlenecks.

Yes that striked me to when i saw it the first
time. A real bonus are its low power for field
applications such as MD.

The "experienced" people on the MSP430 list
say this also that the MSP gives many other MCU's a big kick in the rear end!

>If I understood the ADC it looks like it can do >about a 300 kHz conversion rate though I could

I find speeds of 200ks for the 12 bit ADC some
say that its possible to strech that a bit by
overklocking the ADC clock. There are
independent clock system for the CPU ADC
and the timers.

>It is even fast enough to do a lot of it in C.

TI claims due to the straight forwardness of the
instruction set that C is very well compiled, they might have a point there but it depends
also on the C compiler. Im at the moment to
green to judge any C system so i leave that to
other who knows better.

But there are two distinctive features that i
find quite valuable for my purposes, that is
the Jump of 1024 range and the symbolic adressing mode.

REG
BJ