Bluepill is a popular STM32 Arm Cortex-M3 development board in a compact form factor, and can be programmed with the Arduino IDE thanks to STM32duino project. A key selling point is also its ultra low price since it is now available for $1.67 including international shipping.
I’ve now been informed a similar board is available, but instead of an STMicro MCU, it comes with Microchip ATtiny88 AVR micro-controller. We first discovered MH-Tiny ATtiny88 micro development board on Electrodragon where it is sold for $2.94, but the board is also listed on Aliexpress for virtually the same price as Bluepill board.
MH-Tiny ATtiny88 micro development board specifications:
- MCU – Microchip ATtiny88 8-bit AVR MCU @ 16 MHz with 8KB ISP flash memory (over 6KB available after bootloader footprint taken into account), 64 bytes EEPROM, 512 bytes SRAM
- USB – 1x Micro USB port for power and programming
- Expansion – 2x 15-pin headers with 26x I/O pins including I2C, SPI, 2x PWM, 8x ADC
- Programming – 6-pin ICSP (in-circuit serial programming) header
- Misc – Reset button, power LED and test/status LED
- Power supply
- 5V via USB or 7-35V (12V or lower recommended) via external source through Vin pin
- On-board 500ma 5v regulator
- Dimensions – 44.5 x 18.3 x 3 mm
The board support for the Arduino IDE for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux, and being a Microchip/Atmel part may have better Arduino support than the STM32 Bluepill board (TBC).
Microchip ATTiny88 microcontroller does not include a hardware USB interface, and considering there’s no other chip, the board must be pre-loaded with a bootloader with virtual USB. You’ll find instructions to get started with the Arduino IDE using “MH-ET LIVE Tiny88” in the official website.
Thanks to Zoobab for the tip.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
