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SuperMouse | 4 months ago

The Padauk and Nyquest are barely useable. They are highly specialized devices (often ROM-only).

Cheapest "general purpose" microcontrollers that have enough features for good developer experience are Puya and WCH.

If you are a seasoned STM32 developer you will get used to them within a day.

Examples:

https://download.py32.org/Datasheet/en/PY32F071_Datasheet_Re...

https://arvidtek.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/CH32V006DS0-...

discuss

kragen|4 months ago

While I mostly agree, I have some small quibbles which I think will present a more complete picture.

I've had a good developer experience with 74LS00-family SSI chips (like the quad-NAND-gate 74LS00 and the hex-inverter 74LS04), so your mileage may vary.

Just to clarify, the Padauk and Nyquest chips I linked above are one-time programmable (PROM), not mask ROM, except the PFS122 (3.53¢), which is reprogrammable Flash. (It's advisable to debug your code with a Flash chip or an ICE before you start consuming PROM chips, unless you really like to desolder.) Padauk doesn't seem to make mask-ROM chips at all, and I haven't seen any from Nyquest.

I'm not sure what you mean by "highly specialized". They're tiny, slow 8-bit microcontrollers, so you will certainly be disappointed if you go in hoping for STM32-like capabilities. But they're programmable, and their peripherals don't include things like LiDAR pulse timing circuits or AES encryption hardware or anything like that. It's just very general-purpose stuff like watchdog timers and PWM generators.