I'd like to move on to µC programming, but I have absolutely no idea where to start from [closed]

Question

I've been thinking quite some time about 'moving on' to MCU programming, but the problem is I've never worked with any microcontrollers or similar. As I've been told, AVR and PIC are the most common microcontrollers among hobbyists, and apparently most people suggest AVR for newcomers like me, due to its 'C-friendly architecture' (whatever that means), its C compilers and its large hobbyist community. AVR or PIC or anything else, doesn't really matter to me, all I'd like, would to be able to write C code on Linux with a good compiler, and eventually to be able to add an LCD screen on my MCU (just for outputting basic ASCII characters, and perhaps draw a couple of pixels here and there, monochrome, nothing huge). I don't need anything complex or extremely fast or even big amounts on memory, as I love limited (but not too limited) things, where you need a bit of creativity to achieve goals. I've looked around on the Internet, but most of the pages I found were decades old and/or didn't suggest any good 'packs' I could buy (and that would support things mentioned above). That's why I'm asking you, hoping that you could help me a bit. :)

Thanks, Hoffa.

Answer 1

I used the Arduino which is AVR. It's very beginner friendly and you can very quickly hook things up to use pure C rather than that wiring language thing they use.

I bought mine for like $38 USD and it has a builtin programmer and everything. I've heard there is an arduino starter kit or something with an LCD included.. but I'm not sure

edit: Oh, your in linux. All you should have to do to get running with the arduino is do a pkg_add avr-gcc (or build your own, which is quite simple) and pkg_add avrdude

I use OpenBSD and getting started with my Arduino was very simple and took just about 2 hours to get a hello world running(mainly cause of confusion with avrdude and having to compile an up-to-date version)