Little Micros That Could

　　Little Micros That Could

　　通常，微控制器讨论的焦点是最新的32位设备。它是最快的吗？它有最多的记忆吗？它是否拥有最大的外设集？它有最低的功率吗？

　　然而，对于每一个应用程序，这些新设备找到一个家，有许多更多的8位微控制器正在愉快地填补一个需要。

　　传统的8位应用程序是通过一个简单的串行接口对内存进行限制和通信的。软件通常是手工汇编代码，旨在用代码的最小内存来压缩处理的最大值。今天，仍然有几个8位体系结构，包括经典的通用8051设计。对于每个体系结构，常常有多个实现。每个实现都可以有大量的变体，具有不同的处理器速度、不同的功耗、不同的内存配置、不同的外设选择以及不同的封装选项。结合这些，在一个家庭中获得数百个不同的部分和数千个特定的体系结构是很常见的。

　　为某个特定应用程序选择最佳配置很快就会成为问题。幸运的是，除了传统的“纸和铅笔”定义需求的方法之外，还有允许开发原型来探索配置的板子，提供更好的信息来帮助决定应用程序的最合适的设备。

　　One way to explore an application before committing to a specific architecture is through Arduino. Arduino is an open-source project concerned with， as the Arduino web site says， “making computers that can sense and control more of the physical world than your desktop computer.” This is perhaps a definition of embedded systems. It revolves around the Arduino board， a family of small development boards each with an Arduino processor - an Atmel ATMega 8-bit processor from the AVR family. The processor is programmed using an Arduino programming language in an Arduino development environment that runs under Windows， Macintosh OSX， and Linux operating systems. The development boards are available as fully populated boards， as bare boards， or as design files. Supporting this is a number of interface boards （again populated or as build your own） and educational kits. Arduino users are encouraged to share designs and code on the project web site.