Arduino Custom PCB Questions

Thread Starter

redgear

Joined Oct 17, 2019
136
Hey all,

I am using the Arduino ecosystem for my project. I am building a custom PCB and would like to include the MCU in my PCB. I have read some tutorials online that show how to do it. But, I'm still unclear and have few questions.

The MCU will be responsible for turning a relay on for sometime after two buttons are pressed. It must also control the LCD and print corresponding messages.

1) I see that the Arduino Uno uses a ATmega328P which comes in a DIP package. I am considering the ATmega328PB-MU which comes in a QFN package. There are different versions of the ATmega328PB and I'm not able to find the differences between them. Can I go with the one that costs less?

2) I came across the new ATmega1609, which claims to offer more performance than the ATmega328 and costs less. MegaCoreX brings Arduino support for ATmega1609. The library is new, can I use it in production? How reliable will it be? Is the ATmega1609 a good replacement for ATmega328?


Thanks.
 

trebla

Joined Jun 29, 2019
542
1) ATmega328PB is produced in different package and temperature range options and that makes difference in price. If you do need hi-temp version of this MCU and the package options suits your design then there is no restrictctions to go with the cheapest one.
But you must check out that the Arduino IDE supports PB version of ATmega328. There is some difference in clock scheme between P and PB versions and Arduino IDE may refuse to program ATmega328PB with ATmega328P definitions. And the ATmega328P has also QFN package option.

2) System with two buttons, relay and and 2x16 character LCD does not need much more performance that the ATmega328 already has, unless you have many kilobytes of text to display. ATmega1609 has more timers and serial peripherials but less program flash, it is your choice to use either chip in this project
 

Thread Starter

redgear

Joined Oct 17, 2019
136
1) ATmega328PB is produced in different package and temperature range options and that makes difference in price. If you do need hi-temp version of this MCU and the package options suits your design then there is no restrictctions to go with the cheapest one.
But you must check out that the Arduino IDE supports PB version of ATmega328. There is some difference in clock scheme between P and PB versions and Arduino IDE may refuse to program ATmega328PB with ATmega328P definitions. And the ATmega328P has also QFN package option.

2) System with two buttons, relay and and 2x16 character LCD does not need much more performance that the ATmega328 already has, unless you have many kilobytes of text to display. ATmega1609 has more timers and serial peripherials but less program flash, it is your choice to use either chip in this project
Thanks! So can I downsize the MCU further?
 
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