You Can Have My TIPs When You Pry Them From My Cold, Dead Hands

szczys writes: Should you trash brand new parts developed decades ago and adopt newer models? The argument centers around TIP parts which are a standard type of transistor developed in 1969. This debate started out with a post from Tom Jennings who is known as the creator of Fidonet but works a lot with electronic hardware. Adam Fabio — himself an Electronics Engineer — picked up on the argument for the other side. He attests that if used in the proper application these parts are second to none.

Comments

adam fabio

[Anonymous Coward]

Are we supposed to know who adam fabio is? Why do you think its important to tell the readers who Tom Jennings is but not who adam who is?

Re:adam fabio

[icebike]

Adam Fabio — himself and Electronics Engineer

I'm more interested in the name of the Electronics Engineer.

Re:adam fabio

[davester666]

You know he's a good engineer if he will attest that using the right parts in the right situation will work properly.

If your hands are cold you could use other parts

[billstewart]

If the part were critical, it'd be running hot enough that you had to worry about using the right one. If it's still cold even when you're pumping power through it, you've probably got lots of design headroom for evaluating other parts...

TIP series are good devices

[Anonymous Coward]

...but the things expected have evolved from that time until now. The TIP devices, being bipolar technology, are inherently less efficient than their modern cousins, which are mostly CMOS FET technology. The operation of bipolar and FET transistors is fundamentally different, and what is taught today very often overlooks bipolar devices altogether. Further, the older devices tend to be physically larger than modern equivalents, which is a natural consequence of the lower efficiency demanding more surface area to radiate waste heat. The TIP devices are carburetors in a fuel-injected world.

Re:TIP series are good devices

[Pentium100]

And yet, carburetors are used for a lot of engines - small engines such as those in lawn mowers or chainsaws and also in light aircraft engines.

Sometimes the smaller device does not mean better - SMT parts, for example, are more difficult to solder pretty much require etching a PCB (instead of using a perfboard or point-to-pont construction). Also, if I am building an electronic load or an analog amplifier, the transistors are going to dissipate a lot of heat anyway, so I might as well get a TO-3 part.

Re:TIP series are good devices

[Anonymous Coward]

And lawn mowers and chainsaws are extensively used as zombie deterrents though sometimes it's better to use a baseball bat or a garden gnome.

Re:TIP series are good devices

[serviscope_minor]

being bipolar technology, are inherently less efficient than their modern cousins, which are mostly CMOS FET technology.

This is not insightful or informative, it's plain wrong. Firstly, the competitor to BJT is MOSFET, not CMOS, since the latter implies two transistors not one. Secondly BJT and MOSFETs have substantially different characteristics. BJTs are faster linear amps, MOSFETS are faster at power switching, whereas BJTs handle very high powers better MOSFETS have better drive characteristics etc etc.

http://www.eetimes.com/documen...

Besides if one was inherently superior why does the IGBJT exist?

Re:TIP series are good devices

[Vapula]

Bipolar transistors and FET works on very different principles. For example, the input capacitance of a FET is much higher which can bring some problems in "high frequency" (sometimes, not so high) designs.

FET are also more sensitive components (Vgb can get quite high due to static electricity and lead to component destruction) and may need special driver circuits (for example to make the switch faster).

And, don't forget that more and more of "today's" components are SMD only... which makes using them on a breadboard, a perfboard or a stripboard either difficult or impossible.

Re:TIP series are good devices

[Anonymous Coward]

There are two kinds of electrical engineers out there. Those that think using power transistors is 'easy' and those with experience.

My long ago experience with MOSFET + inductive loads was not a happy one. One of the problems is you have large capacitive coupling between the three terminals. This can cause issues where dv/dt transients + capacitively couple to the gate and cause the part to partially turn on. This not so good. Gate capacitance means if you don't drive the gate hard (lots of current) when turning it on or off, you also get partial turn on and fried parts. This is complicated because even with a scope it's very hard to see what's going wrong before yet another transistor fries.

I've also had unhappy experiences with darlinton transistors, They have high gain, which in emitter-follower applications results in ringing. And they tend to fry when shorted, much more so than BJT or MOSFET's by fry I mean the transistor either creates a short between all three terminals or burns holes in your PCB's.

Frankly, if you're an amateur just use an integrated power IC with overload protection and follow the manufacturers layout notes. Sure they cost more but the cost of burned out transistors adds up after a while too

Re:TIP series are good devices

[Pentium100]

The TO-3 part was a response about size. And while I am able to etch a single sided board, I found it is too much hassle for me compared to using a perfboard since I am not making multiple copies of the same device.

And if I wanted to build a transistor amplifier (I recently completed a tube amp that does not use any semiconductors, and plan to build a couple more (but different)), I would most likely use linear design, not switching. Disregarding any comments about sound quality (which depends on more things than just the topology of the amplifier), the switchers produce a lot of EMI - I have bought a small class D amp on a board and while it sounds OK, it produces so much EMI that if I keep it near my KVM switch, the image on my monitor (VGA connection) becomes distorted and when the amp is on my FM radio picks up more noise. Of course, that can be solved by shielding the speaker cables and the amp, the linear amp does not require as much shielding. The switchers also clip even worse than class B transistor amps.

The only thing good about class D amps is that they use less power. However, if I am not powering the device from a battery and/or do not intend to keep in on 24/7, I do not really care about the power.

Then again, I have a tube headphone amp that I use a lot and keep 24/7 unless I plan to not be at home for several days.

Re:TIP series are good devices

[Pentium100]

I guess it is easier to me to solder bigger components. If I make a mistake (or want to improve the device) and need to desolder a part, with SMD it is even harder to do properly (without destroying the part) than soldering it. Something like SOT is more difficult than TO92. and DIP is easier than SOIC and much easier than TQFP, especially desoldering. Also, with DIP I can use sockets (that are cheap). PLCC would be OK too, but not many modern components are PLCC.

And if I do something with tubes I do not even need a board.

Re:TIP series are good devices

[Pentium100]

I have a desoldering gun, it does not take a long time to desolder a big DIP chip. While most parts are cheap, I still get the inconvenience of having to buy one, so I'd rather use sockets.

I have a hot air gun, but so far, my rate of success with it (managing to desolder a chip without destroying a nearby chip) is not that great.

Re:TIP series are good devices

[__aaclcg7560]

... what is taught today ...

Your electronic gear is no longer repairable. Just toss it out for the latest and greatest. Stay calm and carry on.

Re:TIP series are good devices

[ChrisMaple]

JFETs are not inherently low current devices, it's just unusual for them to be made physically large enough to take high current / high power.
MOSFETS can be used for analog output, it's simply a question of designing the circuit properly. In particular, the high input impedance of power MOSFETS at audio frequencies makes them appropriate for being driven by an op-amp.

Re:TIP series are good devices

[lowen]

Gate capacitance on a junction FET (not all FET's are MOSFETs) and base to emitter capacitance on a typical bipolar are comparable. However, the best-case use for a bipolar is a cool little magnetic device called a transfluxer (no, I am not making that up; see US Patent number 4,459,653 for the 'bifluxer' variant and the citations to the original, Google's link is https://www.google.com/patents... ). A transfluxer-based inverter is very close to being as efficient as a MOSFET design. (And, don't worry, that patent expired nearly 20 years ago.)

Insulated-gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs) are the closest thing to the ideal; FETs in general are voltage-controlled resistors, and at least up until the HEXFET (by Intersil as I recall) invention had substantially higher output impedance than the typical bipolar; bipolars, especially when connected as emitter followers, have very low output impedance but likewise relatively low input impedance. The IGBT is the best of both worlds for high powers and finds pervasive use in the power control industry.

But MOSFETs are good enough for most things. Well, except that the transfer functions are different, just as different as bipolar, point-contact, unijunction, and all other transistors (transit resistors, after all) are from the firebottles they replaced (firebottle, glassFET, valve, tube, whatever you want to call those wonderful vacuum (or gas) based controllers of current....).

(yeah, I am an EE.....got out of EE and into IT to do a bit of stress-reduction.... and, yes, it worked.)

Re:TIP series are good devices

[lowen]

But of course I had to misremember intersil when I meant International Rectifier (HEXFET is a trademark of I-R, by the way).

Re:TIP series are good devices

[Agripa]

The TIP devices, being bipolar technology, are inherently less efficient than their modern cousins, which are mostly CMOS FET technology.

They are less efficient in most although not all hard switching applications but most power MOSFETs now are not suitable for linear applications.

Further, the older devices tend to be physically larger than modern equivalents, which is a natural consequence of the lower efficiency demanding more surface area to radiate waste heat.

And if your application calls for high power dissipation, the die size which controls the Tja becomes more important than the voltage and current rating and high efficiency MOSFETs lose their advantages.

Re:TIP series are good devices

[Agripa]

TO-3 and TO-204 power MOSFETs are rare and expensive these days so it is best to avoid them in new designs. Neither Mouser nor Digi-key have any available. I have a bag filled with NOS IRF351s.

Re:TIP series are good devices

[Agripa]

JFETs are not inherently low current devices, it's just unusual for them to be made physically large enough to take high current / high power.

JFETs will always be low power devices compared to MOSFETs or bipolars because they have limited enhancement range do to the clamping of the gate to source voltage by the inherent gate to source diode. They did make higher power JFETs in the past but even then they were pretty low power.

Do something productive ...

[MacTO]

If you're actually concerned about this, rewrite the tutorials rather than complaining about them. A big part of the reason why reach for those parts is because someone taught them how to use them.

Re:Do something productive ...

[Trogre]

You should have gotten a +5 for that point.

old clunky junk

[mirix]

Not sure why the "hobbyist" community holds onto old crud like this when newer things are cheaper and better, win win. Darlingtons are terribly inefficient. It will work fine for turning on a lamp from your arduino but so will 10,000 different FETs.

Like people using ua741 opamps that are older than me. At least move into 1980 and use an LM358 or something. Same price or cheaper, and the input actually goes to one rail. Still very old junk, but significantly less so.

I guess people read some circuit from 1975 and figure they need to use the same parts verbatim, buy a bunch and are stuck with them making new circuits, that they then post, and more noobs buy the same old junk!

Re:old clunky junk

[Mashiki]

The same reason why some people still build stuff using tubes even though a IC could do it, easier, faster, and cheaper.

Re:old clunky junk

[NixieBunny]

You're one to talk... you use a PDP-11! I at least send mail from my "modern" IMSAI 8080.

Re:old clunky junk

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah there isn't really a deeper explanation than momentum and popularity.

But also, hobbyists who haven't studied electrical engineering don't have the knowledge required (nor maybe the inclination) to evaluate and select components. I've heard a few times from people that trying to a select a part from Digikey (or mouser, or jameco, etc) is daunting and intimidating because there are 10,000 to choose from. So they go to adafruit and get the TIP120. Sometimes there are even people who don't even realize there is a whole other world of microcontrollers besides the "arduino" brand. I blame incuriousness.

The 16F84 microcontroller is a perfect example of an ancient device that was still popular even when cheaper, better, faster, pin compatible replacements like the 16F628A were available.

Re:old clunky junk

[Pentium100]

Programming microcontrollers is difficult, especially debugging the program (it's not like with a PC program where you can use a debugger or log everything etc), Arduino makes it a bit easier. Discrete logic is easier still, but if you want to do anything complicated the 74xx chips take up a lot of space.

Also, there is such thing as "good enough". If I want to drive a nixie tube (or something else that requires relatively high voltage and low current), I'll use a MPSA42. Why? Because it's cheap and works OK for that purpose. I am not buying millions of them so even if some other part is $0.01 cheaper, my time wasted evaluating and selecting for it is worth more than the $0.1 I'll save buying 10 of them. Quite a few times I buy what the local store has in stock instead of special ordering a part. If the in-stock part can work where I need it to, then OK.

Re:old clunky junk

[tigersha]

I work with Apple products and often use them in an production line with PDF document for publications.

Work, for real, with Excel, Photoshop, Illustrator and a slew of PDF tools every day. Both command line and GUI.

If you can tell me how Linux is better for that I will give you a medal.

Re:old clunky junk

[tigersha]

Ok, I will bite. I am an Arduino enthusiast. While I know there are lots of microcontrollers out there, are there any platforms out there that allows a hobbyist to quicjly build a few circuits because the infrastructure around the controller chip is very easy and foolproof to us. I am talking about a SYSTEM here, not the Microcontroller chip itself. Arduino does a lot of interfacing for you. I know about the GPIOs on the Raspberry Pi, I build a circuit with it only 4 days ago. The Arduino was much easier to use in general (for one, the pins are labelled! Imagine that!)

I used the Pi because my project required a camera (it is a alarm with a motion detector). Anything else, I will use an Arduino thank you.
And yes, I have several different Arduinos with bluetooth, from Redbear, dfRobot (beetle rules!) as both Leonardo and Uno configurations so it is not as if I am not curious. I am not an electronic engineer but have a passing interest (I have a degree in Physics, and my dad was a ham and electronic freak so I grew up with this). I do have 35 years of C/C++ experience, started programming in 79 on a TRS'80. Microchips and low level machines are a non-issue.

So? Any suggestions?

Re:old clunky junk

[Anonymous Coward]

"Like people using ua741 opamps that are older than me. At least move into 1980 and use an LM358 or something. Same price or cheaper, and the input actually goes to one rail. Still very old junk, but significantly less so."
My favorite is the oldy-moldy OP-10. I happened to be interested in a _very_ low Input Impedance Op Amp at one time, (Not FET stuff...). Ten OP-10s in parallel brought the Input Impedance below 0.01 Ohms, and with some attention paid to topology, a linear sensitivity down to the 1:1 PicoAmp level. (This was for a Single-Turn Beam Transformer.) And it was fast, unlike most current Instrumentation Amplifiers, with the -3dB point at ~12KHz. Fast enough to see and tune out Ion Source noise. The typical technique back then- a lot of windings feeding a 50 Ohm cable and then into a 50m Ohm Terminator to derive a voltage, was and is hopelessly inefficient and noisy.

People are comfortable dealing with expected Impedance values, and most of the Literature unfortunately supports this.
    I've gone to the opposite extreme on occasion; measuring the EV and Emittance, (Quantum Territory here...), of an individual accelerated Nucleon. The Nucleon exited the Detector pretty much unmolested. (Quick calculation here: ~10e22 Ohms.) This took advantage of not the Particle Information, but the Wave Information, and a whole lot of Liquid Helium.

Re:old clunky junk

[marcansoft]

We all know Arduino makes things easy. The problem is there is a huge segment of the maker community who get all excited about the blinkenlights but have no drive to venture outside their comfort zone, and another huge segment which makes no attempt at providing the tools, know-how, or encouragement for them to do that, and instead just keeps building on the hype-du-jour even when it doesn't make sense. This is how you end up with a large chunk of the community being 10 years behind the curve, or who will keep abusing Arduinos for things they're terrible/underpowered/overkill/otherwise unsuited for because "Arduino!" (one of the worst offenders I saw was an FPGA shield - which was tens of times more powerful than the Arduino it would sit on top of).

This is not new. Arduino isn't new either, it's just the one product/community that got popular. I was programming microcontrollers on breakout boards (you know, just like the Arduino) with built in ISP programmers (you know, just like the Arduino, except we didn't have bootloaders back then) back when these things still connected via parallel port. And the problem was still there. Everyone was learning the PIC16F84 because that's what everyone knew, even though it was grossly out of date, and you could buy a newer chip with dozens of new features, many times the memory, for less money, in a pin-compatible package, almost source-compatible (all you had to do was change the processor header file and add a couple of init instructions to turn off some new features). But people still stuck to the PIC16F84, even though there is absolutely no logical reason to do so, because of momentum. And then people kept doing dumb things, like using external R-C circuits as a horrible analog to digital converter, even though pretty much any newer chip had a built-in ADC, because the PIC16F84 didn't.

Ask yourself this question: if you want to actually build 5 or more of a particular project, would you just get an Arduino for each? Or would you give a shot at researching the available microcontrollers, perhaps sticking to the AVR series, perhaps not, picking the right one, then making a custom board design, trying to optimize it a bit, and probably end up coming up with a much more robust, compact, and efficient design as a result, and learning a lot in the process? If your answer is the latter, then you aren't part of the problem. If your answer is the former, then you are.

Re:old clunky junk

[serviscope_minor]

Looks like we have a component snob here.

Some people are amazingly derogatory about the "maker community". I wouldn';t exactly class myself as one but I don't get the hate. As far as I can tell, the maker community is about making (duh) *things*. The point being, the final thing is what matters and the process of getting there is "whatever works". This is fine. The emphasis is not on building something using the best tools available, it's about getting to the end goal.

Makers as a result tend to only care about the guts of the circuits and stuff if those affect the final thing. Hence the near obsession with Arduino. It reduces 99% of the work to an already solved problem, even if the solution is in some sense not optimal.

But they're not trying to make the smallest/cheapest object, they're trying to make AN object generally that no one else has.

And you know what? There's nothing wrong with that.

Not sure why the "hobbyist" community holds onto old crud like this when newer things are cheaper and better, win win. Darlingtons are terribly inefficient. It will work fine for turning on a lamp from your arduino but so will 10,000 different FETs.

Who cares? The price probably isn't significant part of the overall cost. $MAKER has a box of darlington pairs, all $MAKER's friends have them and he can probably pick up a replacement in a Maplin on a Sunday if he blows out one away from his normal supply.

Hobbyists oddly enough don't tend to have a trade account with Farnell or want to wait until Tuesday morning (which to them translates to next Saturday) to get the part.

And if the maker in question has a circuit known to work and give enough power, there's no point saving a buck but adding a few hours to a multi-hundred hour project.

Like people using ua741 opamps that are older than me. At least move into 1980 and use an LM358 or something. Same price or cheaper, and the input actually goes to one rail. Still very old junk, but significantly less so.

I say this as someone who refularly uses the sub 3V micropower rail to rail single supply op-amps from TI and Linear (ever seen an 8 pin BGA before?). A 741 is essentially a tank with 8 pins. For low spec stuff the performance is perfectly fine. If you don't need low power, rail to rail operation or high speeds they work and do the job perfectly. They are also infeasibly robust.

For a circuit which only needs a 741, you may as well design it for one. There's lots of pin compatible ones you can swap in at a pinch if you really need. But again it doesn't matter.

741 does the job if the job is not to have the most optimised circuit but instead one that does the job.

I guess people read some circuit from 1975 and figure they need to use the same parts verbatim, buy a bunch and are stuck with them making new circuits, that they then post, and more noobs buy the same old junk!

No the problem is yorr goals and attitudes are different from other people's. You don't understand them so you assume they're idiots. I know a bunch of them and they're not.

If you tried to make some of the stuff they made they'd probably be shaking their heads in week 3 when you've been poring over datasheets and finally sent your circuitboard plans off to be made when they'd have their 4th arduino already bodged inside the laser cut wood case with duct tape and jumper wires with the thing mostly working.

Re:old clunky junk

[thegarbz]

holds onto old crud like this when newer things are cheaper and better

Monkey see, monkey do.

The vast majority of hobbiest, and definitely in the subset of the Arduino crowd are not practising electronics engineers, they are people of all backgrounds dabbling into electronics and achieving great things. Ultimately though they achieve their goals without ever understanding how or why. By reading an online tutorial, sometimes even basic enough not to include a schematic but an actual drawing of a part and coloured lines showing the hookup they are building things that work, they may know how it works, but ultimately they don't know the fundamentals of the design to do the component selection or even modify the circuit themselves.

Re:old clunky junk

[Pentium100]

It is still more difficult and also the chip needs to be programmed in the first place. The programmer also may not be cheap. So, if all I need is to flash a LED, I'll use two transistors or a 555 chip. For something complicated, yes, a MCU is better than a board full of 74xx or 4xxx logic. And for stuff that needs Ethernet connection, I'll just use Raspberry Pi.

Re:old clunky junk

[JaredOfEuropa]

A real hobbyist uses whatever is in the drawer.

Re:old clunky junk

[Alioth]

I use a Pi as an AVR programmer. The Pi has SPI on its GPIO interface (or you can bitbang, avrdude supports both)

Re:old clunky junk

[Vapula]

On the other hand, if you want to work with FPGA, you'll be toast with your mac as Xilinx and Altera both support Linux and Windows but no Mac...

Linux UI is not that poor... don't mix Linux and the apps... I'm quite sure that The Gimp on your Mac will give you the same time loss than The Gimp on Linux... it's not Linux' fault but the Gimp's fault.

For coding tasks, Linux is on par (or sometimes superior) to the other OS... Netbeans, Eclipse, Microchip's MPLABX and even Arduino are all supported on Linux...

For electronics (and this article is about electronics after all), you've Eagle (one of the leader in PCB design), FPGA tools (see above, not available under Mac), SPICE simulation, ...

And Linux is very ressource-efficient and work on pretty much any hardware... I don't think that the same can be said of MaxOSX...

Re:old clunky junk

[Vapula]

You can find cheap PICKit 2 on EBay. You can also find cheap AVR programmers, JTAG interfaces and you may even find cheap (E)EPROM/PAL/GAL/PIC/AVR/8X51 programmers like the TL866 which is supported both under Windows and (using a 3rd party project) under Linux.

You can buy PICKit 2 + TL866 + AVR programmer + JTAG for less than 200$ and it'll open you a very vast choice of devices... more than needed for an hobbyist.

Re:old clunky junk

[AmiMoJo]

Many of these hobbyists don't have the understanding needed to select suitable replacement parts. Even just picking a newer op-amp is hard for them, because they don't really understand op-amps or how to read datasheets or what parameters they need to look at. Forget about changing a few passives to account for different parts.

Thus they tend to rely on old circuits and information, and thus want to use those old parts. If you look on Make half the electronics tutorials are clearly written by people who don't understand the technical side themselves, they just implemented an ancient design and are now telling others how they did it.

It creates a kind of feedback loop too. The hobbyist electronic shops stock the old parts because that's where the demand is. Sparkfun and the like have been trying to push past this by including tutorial information, to be fair to them.

There is also the issue of packaging. Older parts are usually available as through-hole, e.g. DIP package ICs. If you have seen the quality of the average hobbyist's soldering, using their crappy â10 iron, you can understand why they like big parts to weld on to.

Re:old clunky junk

[Vapula]

1) Arduino with FPGA shield
While it may sound stupid (as you said, the shield was more powerful than the arduino), don't forget that FPGA programming is much more complex than Arduino/C...
FPGA could be great to generate a video signal but will be very poor when you want to do string processing and maths... FPGA and Microcontroller don't share the same kind of uses...
So, the FPGA shield is not as stupid as it could feel..

2) Arduino is a commodity
Even if you can program a microcontroller in assembler, using direct port access, don't forget that not everyone can/want to do it. Arduino is often used by people who can barely program but need some way to sequence things (artists for example).

3) Arduino as a learning tool
Arduino also has a great teaching potential. In 80's, we had computers like Commodore, Spectrum, Amstrad, CPC, ... which were used as both game station and computer programming learning tool. When you bought some, you had BASIC available and most of the manual was about programming BASIC. Today's computers don't fill that spot anymore... but Arduino can fill it. Someone who makes a led blink under arduino has learned the basics of loop and sequence of instructions... Shields and other will help to go further...

4) PIC16F84
It's amazing how Microchip managed to get their micro-controller similar. You can switch from a 16F877 to a 18F4550 (or other), only one pin will be incompatible (RC3 which becomes Vusb if I remond well)... And 18F PIC share the same SFR map (except for the model-specific registers, for example, the USB-related registers of 18F2550/18F4550).
But it's also true that the number of available chips is huge and selecting one may feel difficult (mostly when only basic functionalities are needed) So I can understand that people will end up stocking one or two "generic" models and stick to them.

5) design with Arduino
Arduino nano compatible bought from China end up very cheap with USB, voltage regulator, quartz... If you buy some quantity, you may drop below 1.75$/module. And the module is not much bigger than a DIP40... so yes, Arduino is a viable option at least for medium-sized production.

Re:old clunky junk

[geoskd]

Plenty of microcontroller programmers allow for active debugging in an IDE. Off the top of my head, a PICKIT2 for PICs or any of the Cypress PSOC kits. A lot of older microcontrollers required an expensive debugger, but now some of these are quite cheap, for example the SWD debugger on a $10 PSOC5LP board.

While I agree that Cypress has some excelent tools, debugging firmware is bitchy hard whether you have good tools or not. You can't use SWD to effectively debug interrupt handlers, and if you're writing firmware without using *lots* of interrupt handlers, you're doing it wrong.

Debugging firmware is still one of the black arts. It requires patience, creativity and more than a little tolerance for blowing up a part and having to solder a new one on. On the up side at least we're pretty much out of the bad old days of needing a bus analyser to follow execution control since the advent of JTAG and SWD, but these are not the solution to everything.

Re:old clunky junk

[geoskd]

Ok, I will bite. I am an Arduino enthusiast. While I know there are lots of microcontrollers out there, are there any platforms out there that allows a hobbyist to quicjly build a few circuits because the infrastructure around the controller chip is very easy and foolproof to us.

Try the PSOC line of SOC systems. You can buy an eval kit that has the processor and labelled breakouts for all the pins. It also has the programmer built right into the board (usb connector on one end). The dev environment is very good, and the chips are awesome (think MCU, FPGA and programmable analog all in one package). They have tons of sample projects, and the whole thing is very easy to use.

You can get them here. If you're willing to bargain hunt, you can get them from a bunch of different places. You can even get them direct from cypress.

Re:old clunky junk

[Antique Geekmeister]

Except when it can't There's a great deal of continued tube use in harsh environments, where the temperature sensitivity of semiconductors presents a very real limitation, or where their very small size makes them more vulnerable to radiation damage, there's the behavioral differences when overdriven, and the list goes on.

Re:old clunky junk

[Pentium100]

200$ is a lot of money. Most of the time the device I want to build costs less (in parts). Even if I used an Arduino. Then again, I don't do a lot of stuff with microcontrollers. It's tubes, discrete logic, analog stuff or a Raspberry Pi (when I need Ethernet support).

Re:old clunky junk

[drinkypoo]

Yes, and to get from "mostly working" to "fully working" they'll have to pore over the same datasheets for 3 weeks too. I mean, Jesus, I had to make a stage prop that involved a switch, a resistor, 12 LEDs and a switch, and it still took a bunch of analysis of the LED datasheet to make something that was going to work reliably as a stage prop instead of burning out halfway through the second performance.

Why would a total noob even do that? They would just buy an LED driver shield, and do absolutely no circuit design. Make it all up in code.

Re:old clunky junk

[drinkypoo]

GIMP's UI is not Photoshop.

No, it's shit.

When they make it so that you can do layer operations without reading a manual, then gimp will be a worthy replacement for photoshop. Every time I use gimp I have to go figure out how to use it again. Every time I use photoshop it's like putting on my favorite robe. If gimp's interface were not the typical total shitfest which OSS developers usually create, perhaps things would be different.

Re:old clunky junk

[drinkypoo]

We all know Arduino makes things easy. The problem is there is a huge segment of the maker community who get all excited about the blinkenlights but have no drive to venture outside their comfort zone

It's a problem for you if people aren't comfortable?

Just be happy these people are trying to create things.

Ask yourself this question: if you want to actually build 5 or more of a particular project, would you just get an Arduino for each?

This question is shit. How many more? 50? 500? It doesn't make sense to actually design your own circuit until the number gets up there someplace. Certainly at 5 I would just buy the Arduinos.

Or would you give a shot at researching the available microcontrollers, perhaps sticking to the AVR series, perhaps not, picking the right one, then making a custom board design, trying to optimize it a bit, and probably end up coming up with a much more robust, compact, and efficient design as a result, and learning a lot in the process?

Yeah, all that costs a lot more than just buying some $3 Arduino Nanos from China. People are part of the problem because they solve their problems efficiently? Maybe you are part of the problem, spending your time here bitching about people getting shit done instead of spending your time redesigning these circuits to be more efficient, and putting your time where your mouth is.

Re:old clunky junk

[PurpleAlien]

http://www.st.com/web/catalog/... Cost: 10 Euro. That gives you an ARM Cortex with plenty of resources, Arduino compatible headers, debugger on board, and the tools are free and you can use http://mbed.org/ with it.

Re:old clunky junk

[PurpleAlien]

http://www.st.com/web/catalog/... Cost: 10 Euro. That gives you an ARM Cortex with plenty of resources, Arduino compatible headers, debugger on board, and the tools are free and you can use http://www.mbed.org/ with it. And yes, the pins are labeled.

Re:old clunky junk

[serviscope_minor]

Yes, and to get from "mostly working" to "fully working" they'll have to pore over the same datasheets for 3 weeks too.

Nope, because they're not trying to get the most optimised working thing.

I've seen some of the stuff they cobble together and frankly it leaves me shaking my head sometimes, but darn it if they don't get stuff cobbled together awfully effectively and remarkably fast.

Yeah it wouldn't be a great way of making a product (but that's not the goal). And sure, if they're trying to make something smaller and more optimized than anyone else, they'll need to read the datasheets.

But frankly given how good stuff is now, you simply don't need the 100% best every time.

Why would a total noob even do that? They would just buy an LED driver shield, and do absolutely no circuit design. Make it all up in code.

Yep, and it would work. Sure it's larger, more expensive and more complex than necessary but it works, now and they can do it now. And then move on to the next thing quickly.

Re:old clunky junk

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

If you can tell me how Linux is better for that I will give you a medal.

Linux is better because it's webscale and can fight off systemD infections since it uses MongoDB to reprioritize client engagement in customer-facing paradigms.

Re:old clunky junk

[serviscope_minor]

oops realised I replied to your quote of an AC, assuming it was you. Sorry!

Re:old clunky junk

[morgauxo]

Cheaper?

It's hard to be cheaper than something that is already in your junkbox. Don't have a junkbox? Show up at a hamfest and some time around noon somebody will give you a ready filled junk-box for free. Most likely it is the junkbox of a recent silent key (ham who died).

Don't worry. Some day those old parts will be rare and expensive so they will only get used for fixing old stuff and maybe making audio amplifiers for people who are nostalgic for the sounds of their childhood. Hobbyists will then be building things with the parts you like to use today. Of course.. those too will be obsolete and the kids will be writing articles about how they shouldn't bother and should be using some new stuff.

Re:old clunky junk

[Megane]

10 years behind the curve

Well, maybe not quite exactly, but Arduino started in 2005. That's ten years ago. Then again, we still have people programming C with /* */ comments, and variable declarations at the top of the function, as though C99 never happened over fifteen years ago. (For instance, STM32 library/sample code is still written that way, but just try to find me an ARM C compiler that doesn't support // comments!)

What bugs me most about Arudino is that it's an 8-bit processor, from the dawn of the Flash-in-CPU era, still being used unironically in 2015. At least the AVR instruction set isn't bad for C (unlike the mess that is pre-32 PIC), but the cost advantage of 8-bit processors is now gone thanks to Cortex-M0. And then when they did try to get into the 32-bit era, they used Atmel's mediocre ARM parts, when the big three (now two) of ST, NXP, and Freescale made better Cortex-M parts. (TI's Cortex-M parts are pretty good now, too, and the MSP430 has a decent niche in the low-power space.)

I skipped Arduino completely and went straight to mbed. Or rather, an NXP guy left one behind after a sales (to us) meeting at work, and it completely opened me up to a whole new paradigm for writing embedded code. (C++ minus the college ivory-tower iostreams shit and templates all over the place.) I'm happy that mbed is still gaining momentum.

if you want to actually build 5 or more of a particular project, would you just get an Arduino for each?

One of the good things Arduino did was create the market for clones, some shield-compatible (now every chip maker's demo boards have shield ports), and others on smaller boards. For the 5-100 crowd, you can get a small board with an ATMega on it, which costs less and takes up a lot less space in your project. Or an ATTiny. Beyond that, since Arduino isn't much more than an Atmel demo board, you can build your own board around just the CPU chip. The Arduino form factor gives you a consistent starting point that you can reduce from, and when you're done, you can re-use it in your next project.

Re: old clunky junk

[Bing Tsher E]

You can also buy an Ardiuno knockoff on eBay for under $10. Pick one that uses a socketed through-hole AVR processor, and you can use it like a development system. Prototype and debug your design. When it's finished pull the chip out of the Arduino to build onto your custom board and plug in a fresh chip.

Also you can get Arduino clone boards from places like banggood.com for $3.20.

link here

Re:old clunky junk

[ChrisMaple]

Gimp's biggest problem is the lack of a full 16-bit-per-color capability for all operations. Layer operations, while still somewhat clunky, aren't bad for the simple work (not more than 4 layers) I've done.

I've bought Photoshop 3 times; never again. I don't process photos for a living, so it's not worth it.

Re:old clunky junk

[marcansoft]

I completely agree about the chip choice issue. At least it's not PIC16/18, which were horrible for C (especially PIC16), but the maker world really needs to move on to ARM and Cortex-M0. However, even worse than the ancient chip choice are the people blatantly abusing it to do things it's just a horrible choice for.

For the 5-100 crowd, you can get a small board with an ATMega on it, which costs less and takes up a lot less space in your project.

The thing is at that point you might as well use the bare chip! I really don't get this attachment to the Arduino, when all it really is is a voltage regulator, a USB to TTL chip, and a bunch of traces on a board. I think there is a huge number of people that don't realize that you can just take the same AVR that's on the Arduino, stick it on a breadboard, give it 5V and ground, and it'll run. Design your project with a TTL-serial port and just use an external USB UART dongle to talk to it when you need to.

There's nothing wrong with prototyping with dev boards like the Arduino, but way too many people build the things into permanent boxes or, worse, commercial products. That's not what they're intended for, or at least not what they should be intended for.

Re:old clunky junk

[marcansoft]

This question is shit. How many more? 50? 500? It doesn't make sense to actually design your own circuit until the number gets up there someplace. Certainly at 5 I would just buy the Arduinos.

I would do my own design at 2. Sometimes at 1.

What you and the people with this problem don't realize is that it's downright trivial to stick the same micro that's on the arduino on a broadboard, give it 5V and ground, and it'll run. You're presumably already designing the rest of the circuit that plugs into the Arduino. Skip the damn thing and just use the chip that it contains directly! The Arduino is a trivial piece of electronics. Count the parts on it. The most complex part of it is the USB to serial converter. You should buy a bunch of those from China (that's what I do, always keep one in my backpack too), design plain TTL-serial ports into your circuits, and just use the converter when you need to talk to the chip (most designs do not need to be in constant communication with a PC to work).

Yeah, all that costs a lot more than just buying some $3 Arduino Nanos from China

No it doesn't. All it takes is to take the pins on your design that say "Arduino goes here" and instead plug in a bare AVR chip. Maybe give it a clock crystal and a voltage regulator. Suddenly, you don't need an Arduino any more. And now you have the freedom to pick a different chip model or family if it fits your design better, if you want. If you insist on treating the Arduino like a magical black box instead, you're not just throwing away money, you're refusing to learn. If curiosity got you interested in making electronics to begin with, why be scared of what's inside the box? The Arduino doesn't even have a case, it's not even hard to see that it really is just very few parts on a board!

Re:old clunky junk

[marcansoft]

I don't see anything wrong with a USB HID interface for NES controllers. That's pretty much what AVR-style micros are just right for. Assuming you're using an AVR board with a native USB uC of course, like a Teensy++ or similar. I've done similar things myself, both using custom PIC designs and off the shelf AVR breakout boards. Also, LUFA, which I assume you're using, is great and in general much higher quality code than a lot of Arduino stuff.

If you're using software/bit-banged USB, you really should look into doing it right with a micro that has built-in USB. But that's by no means the worst micro abuse I've seen (and there is actually an argument for doing bit-banged low-speed USB in super low cost scenarios).

Similarly, although I'm not a huge fan of the Raspberry Pi for other unrelated reasons, it's a perfectly fine fit for NES emulation.

Further, another micro for power management isn't too far off either. It's separate enough that I wouldn't want to throw it onto the micro doing HID. I would encourage you to eventually design a more integrated power control board without using a full-blown arduino for it though, and learn to do it using MOSFETs and the like instead of relays, but that's a learning path. I've used my share of relays for quick and dirty power control.

The abuses that I had in mind are nothing like that. It's things like people using an Arduino to run game logic for a video engine implemented in an FPGA (where they could just implement the micro itself in the FPGA and get something much faster than the Arduino without the Arduino), or, on the other end of the spectrum, people using more than one Arduino to do what is effectively blink LEDs (as a one-off/temporary project it's fine, but if you're doing more than one or doing it permanently you really should stop being scared of using bare microcontrollers and learn how to make your own design closer to the requirements - an Arduino is nothing more than a voltage regulator, a USB to serial bridge chip, and a bunch of wires). Or people building entire commercial products around Arduinos with no particular excuse for using them (like compatibility with other projects/modularity), just because they don't know any better and they are too scared to stick a bare chip on a breadboard.

Yes. I'd probably consider 10 or maybe even 20 to be the cut-off for putting more effort into it.

This tells me that you have the right idea, you just need to get over the mental barrier. I deliberately made the threshold low because it really is stupidly easy to use bare chips. An Arduino is nothing more than an AVR with pins broken out, a voltage regulator, and a USB-to-TTL-serial converter onboard. You can get exactly the same effect by sticking an AVR into a breadboard with a 7805, and an external USB to TTL dongle/breakout board. And since for a great many projects you don't need USB, you can keep that external as a debugging aid only. Voila, welcome to the most basic microcontroller circuit: power and ground. You literally don't need anything else (an external clock crystal is helpful for clock accuracy but not required for many applications).

Personally, my threshold is 1. I will use dev boards for microcontroller design prototyping but if I'm ever making more than one, even for myself, I'll roll my own thing. Sometimes I don't even bother prototyping it with a dev board and go straight to a quick and dirty but stripboard build or similar, if it's a one-off but so simple that I know it will work. I mean, why use a clunky Arduino or other dev board when all I really need is an 8-pin chip for a tiny task?

Re:old clunky junk

[drinkypoo]

No it doesn't. All it takes is to take the pins on your design that say "Arduino goes here" and instead plug in a bare AVR chip.

No, you're missing the point. Designing the PCB takes time that you could spend watching TV or shooting marbles. If you're only making a handful of units, why not just plug stuff together and ship it?

Re:old clunky junk

[marcansoft]

So, the FPGA shield is not as stupid as it could feel.

The dumb part is that you can stick an AVR-compatible core in the FPGA itself and skip the Arduino. Basically, an FPGA shield for an Arduino makes no sense when you could have a standalone FPGA board that is also Arduino-compatible by virtue of embedding an Arduino clone inside the FPGA itself. That would be a much better way of jumping on the bandwagon without doing something that is, design-wise, completely silly. It would run faster than a real AVR too.

Even if you can program a microcontroller in assembler, using direct port access, don't forget that not everyone can/want to do it. Arduino is often used by people who can barely program but need some way to sequence things (artists for example).

There's a threshold here. If you're using Arduino + off-the-shelf shields as a platform and not actually learning electronics, that's fine. That's a different story. Nobody expects you to roll your own board if you care more about the software or artistic side and don't care about the hardware.

But if you're using an Arduino and building your own designs around it, i.e. understand how to use the "black box" that is the Arduino and how to interface with it, then you really need to stop thinking about it as a black box and realize that you can just as well build your own design around a microcontroller, possibly the same one and using the same exact software initially. And then you have many more possibilities than you did when you were limiting yourself to off-the-shelf devboards.

Someone who makes a led blink under arduino has learned the basics of loop and sequence of instructions... Shields and other will help to go further...

Nothing wrong with that either. Again, to clarify, I'm talking about people who inexplicably learn enough about electronics to make their own designs around the Arduino yet refuse to ever touch a bare microcontroller for some reason, or anything that doesn't have the Arduino label on it. If you're just using off the shelf blocks and focusing on the software or using it as a beginner's learning tool then there is nothing wrong with that. I'm not saying Arduino should cease to exist or has no purpose. I'm saying there is a sizable segment of the maker community who inexplicably revere it like it's the be-all-end-all of hobby electronics and don't understand just how irrelevant it becomes after you learn the very basics of building your own hardware.

But it's also true that the number of available chips is huge and selecting one may feel difficult (mostly when only basic functionalities are needed) So I can understand that people will end up stocking one or two "generic" models and stick to them.

I was in that situation too, using the 16F84. And then one day I figured out that I could literally just go to the Microchip parts selector, plug in what features I needed, and pick the cheapest chip that fit the bill (or throw a few more things in just in case). I think one thing that is sorely lacking is documentation/tutorials on "from-scratch" circuit design - such as how to select a microcontroller from the thousands available.

But there is also the fact that the authors of learning material need to stop sticking to ancient crap. For example, the PIC16F88 was a fine replacement for the PIC16F84 when it came out (2003), with a lot more features in the same form factor for cheaper. There was literally no excuse to use the 16F84 ever in any new design or new educational material after that (there were other chips before it that fit the bill too, that's just the one that comes to mind and one that I used a lot myself). The people building the tools, devkits, and writing the docs need to start actually using devices that are current as of the time they make their design.

Now, sticking to families that you know is more reasonable, because there are many unk

Re:old clunky junk

[marcansoft]

So what are you plugging into the Arduino?

I'm not talking about the person who is still at the plug-shields-together stage and doesn't really know how to put more than 4 parts on a breadboard. Nor am I talking about some kind of custom solutions consultant who really doesn't care about efficiency and just wants to deliver the product ASAP with a minimum of effort and doesn't need it to be cost-optimized.

I'm talking about curious makers who start building things on top of the Arduino platform, understand basic digital electronics... but then somehow never move on from basing everything around the Arduino board, and think there is some kind of magical pixie dust in there and that running a bare chip is rocket science. Of which there unfortunately are a lot. People somehow end up doing truly interesting/novel designs that still have a "here goes the arduino" mentality as if it were some kind of religion.

Re:old clunky junk

[drinkypoo]

I'm talking about curious makers who start building things on top of the Arduino platform, understand basic digital electronics... but then somehow never move on from basing everything around the Arduino board, and think there is some kind of magical pixie dust in there and that running a bare chip is rocket science.

I think it's more that if you never move into production, and you never need more CPU, that the Arduino is basically impossible to beat. Maybe this new C.H.I.P.S. $7 or $9 or whatever thing will be the new contender, but the Arduino platform was the first to offer what it offers, and is still the cheapest to offer what it offers. It's just very easy to get things going, in spite of the outdated libraries and documentation lurking out there.

For a user who is only making a handful of devices, the only reason to move beyond plugging modules together (which is easiest with Arduino because of the broad range of available devices) and writing in a high level language (which Arduino provides) and using a lot of example code (which is most readily available for Arduino) is if you are building something where size and/or weight are critical factors. It's a dramatically more difficult and time consuming task, especially if you don't already have well-honed place-and-route skills. It's better for most people to let someone else handle all of that stuff, and work on the relatively simple process of 3d printing or laser cutting an enclosure... to hold all those modules. And if you can do the actual printing/cutting at a maker space so you don't even have to own the equipment or figure out how to set it up on your own, the bar is pretty low.

Re:old clunky junk

[marcansoft]

I agree that if you're just plugging shields together and if you don't care about size or cost and if you're not building any custom electronics then the Arduino makes sense, even in production.

But really, I'm not focusing on commercial production here, I'm talking about hobbyists. Not those plugging in shields, but those designing their own. And making their own widgets using the Arduino as a base for their own custom electronics design. Often, people who are already designing their own boards, or at least doing permanent soldered together prototypes. People who by all measures are capable of throwing together a bare AVR... they just don't know it. Or people who randomly decide to make something useful and do a small run, perhaps still assembled by them but building more than a couple of units, and are too scared to learn how to route a tiny board with a micro and whatever else they need on it, because they don't realize just how easy it is. There is a very significant cargo cult culture here.

Code-wise, it is perfectly possible to use the Arduino libraries and software ecosystem with bare chips. That's also something that many people don't realize.

Re:old clunky junk

[Vapula]

Less than $200 for the 4 programmers... and you've got redundancy (TL866 allows to program both PIC and AVR, the mentionned PICKit 2 is for ICSP debugging (and direct interaction from MPLABX) and the AVR programmer would allow you to program "in situ" (TL866CS is only through the ZIP connector).

TL866CS => 38$-50$ (depends on the extra adapter that you want to get)
Byteblaster compatible JTAG => 12$
PICKit 2 => 12.5$
STK500 (AVR) => 20$ (there are cheaper alternatives)

If you buy through EBay and Chinese shops, that's less than 100$ (but you're not sure that these are genuine parts). Sourcing from some other place can cost up to twice the price (TL866CS at 70$ instead of 38$ for example)

And if you want to stay cheap, you may forget the last two.

Re:old clunky junk

[Vapula]

So, the FPGA shield is not as stupid as it could feel.

The dumb part is that you can stick an AVR-compatible core in the FPGA itself and skip the Arduino.

Well, you also find Arduino FPGA shields like the "Gameduino" where the FPGA comes preprogrammed... Even if the user may reprogram it, if don't know anything about FPGA, ha can still use it...

Don't forget that Arduino is also a whole community sharing tips and code... the differences between AVR and Arduino are shields, easy to use libraries and community...

And, well, I don't see the point in using an AVR core in an FPGA... you could use smaller CPU cores which would leave you with more gates...

Arduino nano compatible bought from China end up very cheap with USB, voltage regulator, quartz... If you buy some quantity, you may drop below 1.75$/module. And the module is not much bigger than a DIP40... so yes, Arduino is a viable option at least for medium-sized production.

But... why? Why use a module when you can just stick the AVR right on your board and get a lot more flexibility? It makes a lot more sense to buy the USB-TTL converter as a module, since at least that is pretty much universal. Or just use a serial connector and have the USB-TTL converter as an external cable for testing/programming if your device doesn't rely on USB being around to actually function.

If you use arduino pro, you drop to 1.33$/module or less, still with voltage regulator and quartz... just no USB port...

If you look at Atmel web page, ATMega328 is at about 1.80-1.90$ for an order of 1000-6000 units... At banggood, you can get them at 1.25$/unit... add to this the quartz and regulator and you end up to something quite more expensive than the chinese module... So, I'm not sure that sticking the AVR right on the board is so interesting... They buy lots of reel of chips, number so big that for a small scale production (not an industrial one) we would never be able to reach these numbers... and the prices they get...

Re:old clunky junk

[Vapula]

Except that PCB design takes time, using a raw SMD AVR like the one you find on the mini pro/nano is not an easy task (unless you have some reflow oven) and the module already takes care of some of the burden...

That said, my latest design was PIC-based (using outdated 16F877 because I had it on stock and it's for a 1-unit production) and not arduino-based...

But should I use a design using some Arduino, I think I'll use the already made module instead of a DIP socket and a ATMega328 with some external components... for a footprint that is not much bigger, I'd get the regulator and the quartz for a lower price...

Re:old clunky junk

[Vapula]

Video logic in FPGA reminds me of the "Gameduino" shield... (http://excamera.com/sphinx/gameduino/) except that to use it, you don't need to know anything about FPGA and it can be used by people who don't even know what an FPGA is.

Re:old clunky junk

[Vapula]

I'd add that /* ... */ comments are cleaner and more powerfull than their // counterpart :

It allows things like :
void foo(int bar /* the bar parameter*/ , char *barbar /* the output buffer */) {...}

End of comment is explicit (unlike the // where the end is implicit) which makes more sense with C that uses explicit end markers anywhere ";", "}"; "]", ")"... and "*/"...

As for the variables declaration in the beginning of the function, it's also cleaner... Having a cleaner code requires more work but, in the end, helps for code maintenance.

so, the // comment and the variable déclaration anywhere in the block are not real improvements.

A real improvement was when we switched from
void foo (bar,barbar)
int bar;
char *barbar;
{ ... }

to
void foo(int bar, char*barbar) {...}

Re:old clunky junk

[Vapula]

Arduino fill a niche that nothing else can fill...

My last design used some PIC16F and other... it took me several hours to get the program running on the prototype (breadboard and such)...

But last year's Halloween, I had a "last minute idea"... an Arduino, one servo, one movement detector module, some bamboo sticks, some nylon wire and a plastic spider... It took me about 1/4h to wrap it up (and 10 more minutes to install it in my entrance "black chapel")... that's the Arduino real strength... You can hack some stuff very easily and fast... If I wanted to do it with some PIC, I'd have had to begin with breadboard, pickit, doc and calculator to get my timer use correct, ... it wouldn't have been ready for the first child who came to ring at my door.

Re:old clunky junk

[marcansoft]

Yes, I was thinking of the Gameduino shield - it's completely silly. It even has a coprocessor inside the FPGA that is user-programmable and runs much faster than the Arduino. The SPI interface is a stupid bottleneck. It would make a lot more sense if they hadn't jumped on the Arduino shield bandwagon and instead had implemented it as a stand-alone product with its own CPU core (which could just as well use the Arduino libs if they'd wanted; it wouldn't require FPGA knowledge either).

Think about it - the Gameduino is the same idea as taking a modern GPU and connecting it to a 386 through the serial port.

Re:old clunky junk

[Agripa]

Like people using ua741 opamps that are older than me. At least move into 1980 and use an LM358 or something. Same price or cheaper, and the input actually goes to one rail. Still very old junk, but significantly less so.

The 358 is not always a good replacement for the 741 although in most circuits it would not matter. It's input bias current is the opposite, it has no input offset voltage adjustment, and single operational amplifiers are more useful in circuits where the power supply is bootstrapped.

There are lots of superior replacements for the 741 but on a practical level, many circuits would not benefit.

Incidentally, I actually prefer the even older 301A which can do things that the 358/324 cannot . . . it has a common mode input range which includes the positive supply. Today that is no big deal as there are lots of operational amplifiers which that characteristic but in the past it was rare outside of some JFET designs.

Re:old clunky junk

[tigersha]

An example? One that is easy to use and would do well as a platform to learn basic FPGA programming?

Re:old clunky junk

[tigersha]

From a hobbyist perspective, building that board is very hard. The Arduino does all the legwork for you and you only have to plug your external components into the board, which already exists. That is the main point. Arduino gives you the infrastructure to use the MCU and only worry about the externals.

When one comes from the point where learning about things like pull-up resistors is exciting (like me) building an actual board is something you leave to gurus and experts.

Re:old clunky junk

[tigersha]

Bingo

Re:old clunky junk

[tigersha]

Alternate windows manager does not help me when I ACTUALLY WANT TO PRODUCE A PROFESSIONAL PDF FILE.

Linux cannot do that, but then, my customers are paying me for that. "Hey, you PDF file has the wrong fonts in, it looks like sh!t on some readers and no metas, but at leat my window manager is great".

How long do you think they are going to pay me?

Re:old clunky junk

[tigersha]

Sure, if you work with FPGAs linux is great, but then, I work with PDF's. What does FPGA's got to do with it? I am not going product a PDF pipeline in FPGA logic. Mind, you that WOULD be a hell of an interesting project and if it works.... $$$$$!

Re:old clunky junk

[Megane]

I'm not talking about in-line comments, I'm talking about blocks of comment-only lines and right-side comments. Sheesh.

And variables being declared in the scope where they are used is cleaner because it's better in terms of locality. Especially when you make functions way too long. Declaring "int temp1" at the top when it's used in a single if statement near the end of a long function is hardly "cleaner".

And I can't see why you're bringing function and parameter declarations into this.

Re:old clunky junk

[marcansoft]

From a hobbyist perspective, building that board is very hard.

The thing is, it really isn't. Assuming you're wiring things up on a breadboard, what you do is:

• Put the AVR on the breadboard
• Temporarily wire up an Arduino as a bootstrap programmer, and use the appropriate sketch to flash the bootloader onto your target AVR
• Connect 5V and GND
• Plug in a quartz crystal (if needed) to the xtal pins
• Connect a USB to serial dongle/adapter to the serial pins
• Done.

Sure, it's a couple more steps than "Connect Arduino to USB", but it's fewer steps than the average project requires for everything else.

Re:old clunky junk

[tigersha]

I was talking about the ACTUAL SURFACE MOUNT BOARD. As OPPOSED to using a breadboard. And that IS beyond hobbyist use.

Where are the advantages?

[marcansoft]

I have no doubt that old-school TIP series transistors still have plenty of uses today, but the article is completely devoid of any examples. All it is saying is "look, these things aren't unusably bad for driving motors - they're just bad." Tom's post is still dead-on - using old school NPN BJTs for switching heavy loads today is completely dumb, and just because he exaggerated a bit about just how bad it can get doesn't mean he's wrong.

I was hoping for some insight, like a discussion of robustness (I've blown FETs way more easily than I've blown BJTs), or perhaps use in analog applications, or anything else really. But nope. TFA is literally just confirming the findings that it's trying to disprove, while providing absolutely no counter-examples. Somehow feels like par for the course for Hackaday these days...

I use old school jellybean parts all the time, sometimes because it really doesn't matter (driving a relay? meh, throw a BC547 on it, who cares, it's relatively low power anyway), sometimes because it's all I have lying around, but sometimes using ancient devices is actually very dumb, and I wouldn't turn a motor on and off with a BJT these days.

Re:Where are the advantages?

[Alioth]

There are also some pitfalls of MOSFETs he should really mention (probably why people are using these old BJT power transistors is they are a bit more forgiving in this respect). When driving motors and relays, you often get some inductive 'kick', and this will capacitatively couple across the MOSFET's gate and go right back to the microcontroller's pin. Usually this results in just the microcontroller crashing, but it may also result in latch-up which can quickly destroy the microcontroller (I've seen it happen).

It can normally be prevented with a diode across the relay and a 10k resistor to the gate of the MOSFET (which will slow its turn on time, but usually we don't care all that much for these applications) but the original article mentions none of this and you'd have thought the author would have known better!

Re:Where are the advantages?

[marcansoft]

To be fair, I always had to put diodes across motors and relays when using BJTs. I'm not sure if it coupled back through the transistor or the rails, but I certainly got micro resets and crashes if I didn't. It's always a good idea regardless of what switching technology you use.

Re:Where are the advantages?

[Agripa]

I have not encountered this problem myself although I might not have noticed and I tend to be paranoid about interface circuits anyway. My guess is that the excessive reverse transfer capacitance of the MOSFET allows the high dV/dT from the inductive kickback to get into the microcontroller. This would be exasperated by a drive circuit intended for the "high impedance" input of the MOSFET compared to a bipolar transistor where the low impedance drive circuit would just absorb it.

Re:Where are the advantages?

[Agripa]

For many loads however using a bipolar transistor is more economical than a MOSFET simply because of economics. Current density of a bipolar transistor is higher allowing less die area making them less expensive. Insulated gate bipolar transistors have the same advantage over MOSFETs.

This becomes more important at higher voltages where MOSFET die size scales by the square of the voltage but it still applies at low voltages.

Re: The 555 timer sucks.

[0xdeaddead]

arent we at the point where SOC's are cheaper than 555's?

We actually use them in our telescopes

[NixieBunny]

The TIP120 is not too efficient, but if you're already going to be dropping a couple volts in the transistor, it simply doesn't matter. Our radio telescopes use very low resistance coils to control the attenuation of a microwave signal using a device called a ferrite modulator. Its voltage drop is about 1 volt, and the lowest power supply available is 5V, so it works fine. Plus, we have a bin with 50 of the darn things in the parts cabinet. So there, Tom! (I jest. He's one of my best friends.)

Needless limiting of options

[Ashtead]

Where to begin?

Should one even bother to do anything about advice from someone who goes on about enhancement MOSFETs while everything else is rubbish, and then present the circuit symbols for Junction FETs as examples? Makes one wonder what else is inaccurate there.

The actual advice of throwing out anything designed in the past century is at sensitiveresearch.com/DoNotTIP/index.html.

Where not only the so-called TIPs, (by which is meant a certain series of reasonably popular power transistors in TO220 packages, designed by Texas Instruments) but also other devices such as 2N2222, LM386, and "bipolar transistors" and so on, are no longer to be used. Just because they might not be the best choice for switching loads controlled by an Arduino or similar.

This makes for a needless limiting of options -- If all one ever does is to turn things on or off from some microcontroller maybe, but with whatever designs I make I find that to be a small fraction of what is happening. The rest are things like multi-frequency linear or RF where all kinds of semiconductor devices might be applicable. Even vacuum tubes in some cases.

And then looking around the site and discovering the author is in his own words, "reasonably obsessed with the early history of electronic (not necessarily digital) computing" --- and then he advocates discarding what amounts to the elements of the analog electronic computers? This does not ring true.

Re:Needless limiting of options

[NixieBunny]

Analog computers weren't built of TIP120s or LM386s or 2N2222s. They were built with 12AX7s and 5U4Gs, and the later ones of Philbrick K2-Ws. By the time the TIP120 came out, DEC was building PDP-11s out of TTL chips. TTL is rather dumb nowadays, as we have CMOS.

One thing is true about the old parts, though... you can still buy them. I've had occasion to work on some 15 year old electronics, and none of the bigger chips are made any longer. We can still get 741s to fix our 40 year old spectrometer, but no Xilinx 4003s to fix the 20 year old one, nor CoolRunner CPLDs to fix the ten year old one.

Re:Needless limiting of options

[Alioth]

What's most inaccurate is that he says that using a MOSFET means always a really simple circuit with the microcontroller directly connected to the gate of the MOSFET and nothing else in the circuit (except the pulldown resistor). In Microcontroller And MOSFETs 101 you soon learn about inductive loads and the problems they can cause, relays are the popular example - when you turn off the current to the relay you get a big voltage spike over the MOSFET. This capacitatively couples over the gate and zaps the output pin of the microcontroller, usually causing it to crash, but it can also cause the output to latch up and destroy the microcontroller. You need some circuitry to prevent this, usually a diode across the relay and a resistor in series with the gate, but he mentions none of this.

Re:Needless limiting of options

[drinkypoo]

Where not only the so-called TIPs, (by which is meant a certain series of reasonably popular power transistors in TO220 packages, designed by Texas Instruments) but also other devices such as 2N2222, LM386, and "bipolar transistors" and so on, are no longer to be used. Just because they might not be the best choice for switching loads controlled by an Arduino or similar.

So, I am not an EE, but it seems like what he's actually saying is that the MOSFET takes an order of magnitude less turn-on current and that it wasts an order of magnitude less power as heat. Is that true? And if so, why would you not want to save power? Are your driver transistors doubling as a heater?

Re:Needless limiting of options

[Ashtead]

Where not only the so-called TIPs, (by which is meant a certain series of reasonably popular power transistors in TO220 packages, designed by Texas Instruments) but also other devices such as 2N2222, LM386, and "bipolar transistors" and so on, are no longer to be used. Just because they might not be the best choice for switching loads controlled by an Arduino or similar.

So, I am not an EE, but it seems like what he's actually saying is that the MOSFET takes an order of magnitude less turn-on current and that it wasts an order of magnitude less power as heat. Is that true? And if so, why would you not want to save power? Are your driver transistors doubling as a heater?

A lot of the energy budget depends on the circumstances. When running on batteries, power draw is much more of a concern than when running on mains power. Similar with heating -- it may or may not be anything that needs to be attended to. Now having said that, there are several good reasons to use the MOSFET instead of the bipolar transistor, but they are not so overwhelmingly good that it makes sense to discard all kinds of bipolar transistors just because ot that.

The turn-on current for the MOSFET comes from charging the capacitor formed by the gate -- the instantaneous current is C dV/dt, in other words, the faster the transistor is asked to turn on, the larger, though briefer, will the current pulse required be. Once the transistor is turned on it doesn't require any current to stay on. There will however be another similar current spike, in the opposite direction, when the transistor is to be turned off and the gate capacitor is discharged. When the load is something like a motor, these time requirements won't be all that strict, so a controller is quite likely to be capable of driving the transistor. Now, without the necessary additional protective passive components (diode across the motor, maybe also a resistor and capacitor "snubber" circuit there as well; further diodes and resistors and capacitors around the MOSFET that serve to "eat" the energy coming from the motor being turned off) -- there is a nonzero risk that the load will turn on and stay on, having fried the MOSFET and maybe also the output circuitry of the microcontroller or Arduino...

In contrast, the bipolar transistor will require a steady base current for as long as the load is to stay powered, and they are more robust, less sensitive to surges and other influence of the load, and this does make it easier to make the circuit reliable, easier to make it work and easier to make it keep on working properly, The TIP120 and many of its relatives, being Darlington pairs, do have a fairly large current gain, so the required drive current is likely to be small enough for the microcontroller IO line to drive. But they have a voltage drop, and corresponding power loss, and are thus less optimal for driving motors. Which may or may not be a problem-- it will all depend on the actual application.

Thus, using a MOSFET for a switch has its advantages and its pitfalls like everything else -- and I don't have any objections to Tom Jennings recommending MOSFETs over bipolars for turning things on or off. What I do object to is the wholesale discarding of all bipolar transistors as if turning things on and off with the MOSFETs were the be-all and end-all of all electronics -- as we well know that is not so.

Re:Needless limiting of options

[SuricouRaven]

The 7400s stayed in use for a long time in education, as they were a lot more durable than their CMOS counterparts in the 4000s. TTL doesn't die if you handle it without antistatic precautions.

Re:Needless limiting of options

[tlhIngan]

Analog computers weren't built of TIP120s or LM386s or 2N2222s. They were built with 12AX7s and 5U4Gs, and the later ones of Philbrick K2-Ws. By the time the TIP120 came out, DEC was building PDP-11s out of TTL chips. TTL is rather dumb nowadays, as we have CMOS.

Actually, they were. Because digital computers either were too big, too unreliable, or too hard to use.

Discrete logic was brought into play by Apollo (you can thank the Apollo Guidance Computer for basically bringing the 74xx series logic chips to life), but for a lot of things, the necessary parts and interfaces didn't exist (you have a time-varying signal, to use a digital computer, you needed an ADC to get it in, and a DAC to bring it out).

Apollo used a lot of numerical calculations, so a digital computer was great. But for a lot of present-day tasks, the AGC was way too big and bulky and inefficient. Many targeting computers, for example, were analog computers.

And through the 60s and 70s, analog computers ruled, many were rated on how many different operations they could do at once. Remember, most analog computers were fixed-function (like said targeting computers), but there were many "programmable" ones - desk sized units you programmed using jumpers and other things.

Basically, an analog computer's fundamental part is the op-amp - the first part being "operational" which actually means doing operations - adding, subtracting, multiplication, division, integration, differentiation, etc. Early analog computers used discrete transistors to make up the op-amp, while later ones used real op-amp ICs (though this was late enough that the digital home computer was just emerging).

Re:Needless limiting of options

[ChrisMaple]

That doesn't say much good about the design of the microcontroller. Output circuits should be designed to snub overvoltages.

Re:TIPS means to...

[Anonymous Coward]

"TIPs" refers to Texas Instrument Power devices. A _Trade_ Name. A more Generic name is BJT- Bipolar Junction Transistor, of which TIPs are a variant.
The Summary is one of the most ignorant in recent Slashdot memory. It's not even worth being labeled "Flamebait"; not enough thought was given for that designation. BJTs thrive in all sorts of Analog Markets to this day.
But, well, Samzenpus...
"Adam Fabio — himself and Electronics Engineer..." What the Hell is that supposed to mean?

Re: The 555 timer sucks.

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/PIC10F200-I%2FP/PIC10F200-I%2FP-ND/665881
http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/LM555CN/LM555CNFS-ND/458696

You may find a cheaper SOC somewhere, but it doesn't look likely.

TIP?

[Anne Thwacks]

I presume TIPxxx refers to "Texas Instruments Plastic" transistors. These have proprietry TI part numbers - although many were later second sourced.

The parts were widely used because they were very cheap, and widely available. The early ones used a plastic that tended to burst into flames if the device was overloaded.

There are generally perfectly adequate alternatives with the European Standard numbers (BCxxx). It is unclear why these people are promoting a strangely obsolete technology, and the OP is not much help in understanding any of the relevant issues.

Re: The 555 timer sucks.

[Alioth]

Maybe not a microcontroller, but a whole circuit.

Before high power LED bike lights were commercialized, I made a daylight visible rear light for my bike after I got rear ended, using 6 x 1 watt red Luxeon LEDs. I wanted it to flash a pattern so it would show up in a driver's vision, but for night time use I wanted it to be less bright and be a steady light. While the 555 timer is very very cheap and a PWM circuit for dimming the LEDs and flashing them could easily be made, an ATtiny13 turned out to be a cheaper way to implement the circuit because instead of potentiometers to control brightness, very cheap pushbuttons could be used to cycle through the program running on the microcontroller.

A 555 timer costs pennies, and an ATtiny13 costs about 50p (about US $0.75). Pushbuttons cost pennies, potentiometers cost pounds.

Re:TIPS means to...

[Anonymous Coward]

I dOnT kNOW, mAYbe tHe CaPitAlIzATioN MatTerS?

fidonet...

[mnemotronic]

... for those who never used or heard of it, was a peer-to-peer messaging and file interchange network where a peer was a BBS accessed by dial-in modem. This was in the days before ubiquitious tubed internet access. For folks that didn't have access to usenet at school it was THE place to be. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...

Ahh the old TIP series

[Rainwulf]

Just like the 2N3055.. Yes, old. but in some cases, absolutely perfect for the job. Usually as linear pass transistors for power supplies :D

Re:Ahh the old TIP series

[plcurechax]

Just like the 2N3055.. Yes, old. but in some cases, absolutely perfect for the job. Usually as linear pass transistors for power supplies :D

There is plenty of reason to avoid the 2N3055, well actually to avoid the TO-3 packaging. The package flexes when mounted, which can cause poor thermal transfer to its heat sink. TO-3 are manufactured to be curved so as to help ensure good thermal contact, but the curvature isn't preserved if the TO-3 is removed.

References: OnSemi's Application Note 1040, and Burr-Brown (TI) Mounting Considerations for TO-3 packages.

Carburetors are evil!

[Dareth]

Carburetors are evil! They tried to kill Harrison Ford (Han Solo) and should be banned

Re:The 555 timer sucks.

[AdamHaun]

Sure, people will scream "why waste a microcontroller on something a simple 555 timer can do." The answer is "because the microcontroller costs less and is way the fuck more reliable."

On the other hand, a microcontroller needs software, which means a development and programming toolchain. Those tend to change fairly often -- come back to that project in a few years and you might have a whole new IDE to learn.

Re: The 555 timer sucks.

[NixieBunny]

I agree that the 555 is not very good, but I LOVE knobs! Knobs are like 5,000,000 times more pleasant than buttons. I just put four potentiometers on my Burning Man art lighting project built on an Arduino shield, so that we can control the mood by changing the parameters a bit.

Send me all your vacuum tubes then...

[geek111]

Folks. Some of those vacuum tube designs are almost 100. Please STOP using them for new designs! (Guitar Amp designers, THIS MEANS YOU. You should only use enhancement mode MOSFETs in Class D configurations. Do you hear me!?!?? Don't listen to those pesky guitarists who tell you they like the way their tubes sound. The numbers don't lie.

Then again there ARE metrics that matter that don't make the datasheet. If you disagree, I will happily accept all NOS vacuum tubes that anybody wants to send me.

Re: The 555 timer sucks.

[ChrisMaple]

Trimpots can be very cheap; under 10 cents US. Weatherproof pots are much more expensive.