3 cent blinky what else can it do?

[Beamin]

Can it run Crisys or windows 10 at 4k 60 fps?


So it seems like a digital answer to a 555? But unlike a 555 you have multiple outs and can make pwm and different saw tooth square sine waves? Each pin could be different? Does it have input pins that would trigger an out put pin?

What would you use this for besides blinking a light; which you would just use a 555 because no programing (unless you are making a product and its cheaper, no external parts like the 555/faster to program it)?

I see all these chips but can never figure out what they would be good for. Could you take its output and amplify it up to a useable current for driving much bigger LEDs or mechanical things like relays?

[drussell]

 

[BravoV]

Seriously, you need to sit down talk seriously with your boy friend about his TLC for you, feel sorry & pity. 

[FrankBuss]

It has 1 k flash and 64 bytes RAM and can output PWM signals. This is more RAM than the ATTiny9 has and you can play music with it:



So add a battery and a piezo speaker, and you'll have one of these greeting cards for less than a buck. Sell it for 2 bucks -> profit!

Such microcontrollers are useful in many other small applications as well, like one of these LED flashlights with a button, where it changes the intensity with PWM by pushing a button. You can individually program which pins are input and which pins are output. But in output mode the pins of the PMS150C can only drive 14.5 mA, so no high current pin unlike some PIC microcontrollers have. If you want to drive higher currents, you would need an additional external transistor, e.g. for controlling motors for toys.

[Beamin]

Seriously, you need to sit down talk seriously with your boy friend about his TLC for you, feel sorry & pity. 

 

I didn't realize it was a micro from the title. Seemed like some purpose built part for leds. Never even thought you could have a 3 cent micro, that's what threw me off, but that's also why this video is relevant we have semi complex chips for less then the cost of the parts that support them much less.

So you can basically do anything with it. That's a question I still struggle to answer to lay people when they say "cool an Arduino, but whats it do?" Then I try to think of real world examples still not fully understanding how much they can do and what they can't.

How much would this part cost in the 1980's or 70's would it be like an alter8800?

[Psi]

It has 1 k flash and 64 bytes RAM and can output PWM signals. This is more RAM than the ATTiny9 has and you can play music with it:

That's likely what most of them are doing inside cheap toys and singing birthday cards.


 

[joseph nicholas]

This whole thing seems like some kind of publicity stunt to promote a product.  I remember getting a greeting card from one of friends in 1990 with one of these chips in it. 

[Richard Crowley]

I am seriously considering whether these could be programmed to create a small and inexpensive replacement for the obsolete National/TI LM3915 (and LM3916)  with one or more serial to parallel LED drivers as the output.

Ref: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/microcontrollers/replacement-for-lm3915/

[Fungus]

Seriously, you need to sit down talk seriously with your boy friend about his TLC for you, feel sorry & pity. 

 

I didn't realize it was a micro from the title. Seemed like some purpose built part for leds.

It's only been the topic of three blog videos now. 

[ali_asadzadeh]

Buck, Boost, Inverter, etc... are well with in their spec!

[Kleinstein]

The are quite a lot of simple things that could be done with such a micro. For small control jobs 64 Bytes of RAM and 1 kBytes code (PROM) is sufficient. So things like a simple timer / delay , PWM control.

One can do quite a lot with surprisingly little code. 1 K is already quite a lot for Assembler. My reciprocal counter use 2 K (including display driving), a simple pulse hight analyzer some 200 Bytes, including a soft UART.

However I don' understand Dave's large interest. The low price is only really relevant in large quantities - that is 10K and up. Especially for hobby use and thus usually only a few units, a flash based unit is much more suitable, especially as the programmer can be much cheaper.

The big limitation is being OTP - so add a socket or adapter board to the price and it is no longer cheap.

[james_s]

This whole thing seems like some kind of publicity stunt to promote a product.  I remember getting a greeting card from one of friends in 1990 with one of these chips in it.

In 1990 that was probably a mask programmed ASIC, not a microcontroller.

[chris_leyson]

Tha Pakauk PFS154 in reprogammable using PDK5S-P-003 programmer.
http://www.padauk.com.tw/upload/doc/PFS154%20datasheet_v002_EN_20180123.pdf

[Richard Crowley]

However I don' understand Dave's large interest. The low price is only really relevant in large quantities - that is 10K and up. Especially for hobby use and thus usually only a few units, a flash based unit is much more suitable, especially as the programmer can be much cheaper.  The big limitation is being OTP - so add a socket or adapter board to the price and it is no longer cheap.

I can imagine exactly the same discussion about the ATmega168 as Banzi, Cuartielles, Igoe, Martino, Mellis, et.al. was developing the Arduino.  Or how the ESP family burst from Asian OEM obscurity into an Arduino-like ecosystem of its own.  Even if those things cost 5x or even 10x as much in small quantities, they are still dirt-cheap (BrEnglish: "cheap as chips").

Of course there are re-programmable versions.  The first one that we know about just happens to be an OTP member of a rather large family.

[FrankBuss]

Tha Pakauk PFS154 in reprogammable using PDK5S-P-003 programmer.
http://www.padauk.com.tw/upload/doc/PFS154%20datasheet_v002_EN_20180123.pdf

But it costs 8 cents in larger quantities:

https://lcsc.com/product-detail/Others_PADAUK-Tech-PFS154-S16_C317613.html

You can get an ATTiny for $23 cent from Digikey:

https://www.digikey.de/short/j03vmd

Unless you plan to sell a million of it, the price difference doesn't really matter, because with the Padauk chip, the development time might be worth more than you would save. And I very much prefer the Atmel Studio IDE over the Padauk IDE, and the AVR architecture has a lot bigger community who can help, and it is easier to get it, and pre-programmed from Microchip itself, even for like 100 pieces. But maybe Dave wants to create some gadget which sells a million times, who knows.

[westfw]

Tha Pakauk PFS154 in reprogammable using PDK5S-P-003 programmer.
http://www.padauk.com.tw/upload/doc/PFS154%20datasheet_v002_EN_20180123.pdf  :https://lcsc.com/product-detail/Others_PADAUK-Tech-PFS154-S16_C317613.html

Nice find...  Still no documentation of programming algorithms, but at least the datasheet tells you which pins are used (PA 3,5,6.)

[Beamin]

Seriously, you need to sit down talk seriously with your boy friend about his TLC for you, feel sorry & pity. 

 

I didn't realize it was a micro from the title. Seemed like some purpose built part for leds.

It's only been the topic of three blog videos now. 

When I saw the 3 cents my brain just said no way that's a real micro processor. I thought it was something else. Sometimes I don't see the other topics like the one right below  this one ! Oops! 


So if they had these in birthday cards in the 90's; I remember getting one when I was 10 and taking it apart to find a coin cell, piezo speaker, blob on chip, and a "Switch" that was in the fold of the card.

Wouldn't that have also been a 3 cent micro? Or was that a purpose built chip that could only play tones through a speaker and nothing else? If so its 25 years past due.

[james_s]

It's extremely unlikely that a musical greeting card would have used a microcontroller. It would have been a custom IC consisting of an oscillator driving a counter addressing a crude mask programmed ROM that would select the notes from a divider driven by the same oscillator. Very simple, just a digital music box.

[EEVblog]

Seriously, you need to sit down talk seriously with your boy friend about his TLC for you, feel sorry & pity. 

 

I didn't realize it was a micro from the title.

It has Micro in the title and description. And I've done two previous videos with "micro" in the title and description.

[rrinker]

 I've found plenty of uses for 'Arduino' - granted I am using the plain Atmel micro and not embedding a whole Arduino board of any sort in my projects. But I do use the full Arduino boards for prototyping (darn, thought I had taken a picture of my breadboarded project, guess not). Soon as I get the schematics all drawn up I'll post them.

Another thing to do is provide some sequenced lighting for buildings on my model railroad. Likely be using some ATTiny micros for this, but these little 3 to 5 cent jobbies could do it easily as well. It just may not be worth it to invest in another infrastructure though, I'd need to make a LOT to make up the price difference for the cheapest ATTinys. Have to see what David2 comes up with in regards to an open source way to program the Padauks. I already have everything needed to program ATTiny.

[b_force]

You can make a blinky with just one transistor.

[rrinker]

You can make a blinky with just one transistor.

 Or a single RCA CDP1802 CMOS microprocessor. Yes, nothing but an LED and a 40 pin, 8 bit microprocessor. And the result draws less power than an LED with an LM3909 blinker.

Obvious impractical, but it was a thought exercise many years ago and it was actually made, and works.

[Richard Crowley]

... less power than an LED with an LM3909 blinker.

LM3909  Another useful chip that TI decided to kill off for no apparent reason.

[b_force]

... less power than an LED with an LM3909 blinker.

LM3909  Another useful chip that TI decided to kill off for no apparent reason.

Don't know, nothing a NE555, a HEX inverter or a comparator/opamp can't do.

[cdev]

You can make individually addressable RGB LEDs to turn into a LED screen. Or hanging lights, like those christmas lights that change colors in patterns. Thats quite cool.