Short Answer: PIC Microcontroller
That’s right, Arduino is just a fashion item that is too expensive to make efficient and viable products with. You heard that right. Let’s say you have a product idea you want to manufacture and sell or make yourself to use in your personal space. For instance, this digital thermometer project.
Nobody in their right mind will use Arduino. Why? Because they cost £20 minimum. A PIC Microcontroller (we use the PIC16F628) only costs £2 to buy from say AliExpress. And it achieves the same result. Granted they are two different products entirely. But if you want to manufacture an item for low cost then Arduino isn’t the way to go.
Plus the development board of an Arduino is huge! Want to make your digital thermometer fit in a nice little 3D printed package? Good luck with that! You’ll need a large casing that looks ugly. With a PIC Microcontroller you can custom build the development board to any size you like.
I’ll be honest, during my days studying Product Design BSc at Brunel University in 2005, the number one Microchip that they recommend you to design and product gadget with is the PIC16F628. It’ just so versatile and allows you to do some really cool logic and sensing projects.
Let’s not forget that it allows you to code in assembly language. Let’s not forget that this is a far superior coding language to design products with. Way better and cooler than the Arduino Language. Why? Because it is practically coding in 1’s and 0’s. This allows you to make your code so efficient that the battery will last for months on a single run. Try doing that with the Arduino, which needs to boot up an entire operating system to just blink one LED. Talk about inefficiency.
On my website here at odonodesign.com/blog, you’ll see a lot of projects in the future being posted here on PIC16F628 products and projects you can build yourself. This will be the number one hub for product design, electronics engineering and most importantly, mechatronics!
So grab a cup of tea, sit back and browse the number one makers site for designers and engineers.
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