Hi I Thought we'd take a look at some more obscure name microcontroller manufacturers and a place where you can actually buy these ridiculously cheap in stock and available for immediate delivery. Now you might be aware that you know it's probably common in China and other Asian countries to get like microcontrollers for like a couple of cents each. It's how they create these you know farting novelty toys that you buy on eBay for like two bucks delivered and they are obviously not using you know your more name brand, your microchips, your app, Miller's your TI's your free scales and all those sort of microcontroller manufacturers. They're not using those processes because they simply cost too much, but there are many Asian brand or Chinese brand manufacturers out there of these super cheap microcontrollers that you've no doubt probably haven't heard of before.

so let's take a look at them. This came about. This was inspired because Mike from Mike's literary stuff I saw his tweet and he pointed out a three cent microcontroller which we got an antenna of quantity which we're going to take a look at here in a minute. So I thought it would just be interesting to just take a look at a more general look at.

Now this is not a sponsored video I Don't want it to be an advertisement or anything but I mentioned the likes of Digi-key and Mouser and Farr nails and RS all the time. Well it's kind of not equivalent in scale, but you know, like get in there in in from China and this is um LC SC and they're actually a subsidiary of Rjl CPCB who I've mentioned before with on my second channel video I've done. they manufacture, you know, really cheap PCBs and stuff. Anyway, they've got this huge facility, much like you know, a lot of the big catalog providers.

10,000 square meter warehouse, 120,000 parts in stock, 600,000 customers is what they claimed. 2,600 daily orders and for hours. They'll ship your product, not have actually bought stuff from them before. and I don't a spill this but mmm waffles here we go.

Here's just some my chips that I've got mystery chip. Guess which chip it is? you're not gonna be able to read that from here. but yeah, there you go. they're in.

That's a waffle tray. if you haven't seen that before it. I Want to tip that up. It actually comes with a second thing like that and now I can tip it up.

but anyway, that's a waffle tray. Usually these has come on like reals, but a lot of manufacturers make them in what's called these or just trays a column waffle trays cuz it kind of looks like you know, a waffle iron kind of thing. and these are sitting your pick-and-place machine and they instead of using the reels, they just pick in place from these trays anyway. You can't fit as many and you've got to change it more often.

But anyway I Got those in stock. obscure brand? Well you know I'm more obscure brand chip not readily available from the other places I normally buy from but they this company had them in stock and they're available. So let's take a look at some of the brands and stuff they have now. Yeah, if you have a look down here, they've got 56 authorized brands, 270 and international brands and 608 made in Asia brands that you've probably never heard of and we could go through here until the cows come home.

But let's just go to the embedded processors and controllers section and hands up. if you've heard of any of these above 40 or Technol, you know there's once you've heard of. of course, Tremendous. This s TTI microchip free scale at Mill.

you know they're all in there in EXPEED they're all in there. so they sell these as well. and no, you're not really going to get them magically cheaper. these name brand ones magically cheaper from an Asian or Chinese supplier like this, they're You know, pretty much if they're genuine, you gotta pay pretty much at the same price.

so there's no magic board there. But as we'll see, this is super cheap micros and their and other things and they're just absolutely fascinating. So I'm Adi eel and I think I've heard of Giga device MDT new Vuitton I've heard of wch East soft-like male whim Sonic's sink moths all winner of her. You know they make processes which are used in like the orange pie and all sorts of You know Raspberry Pie Ripoff, Hi Trend Tech and Pedak which we'll have a look at and sin wit anyway.

Mike Posted this link to this Paddock brand. hands up if you've heard of them the PMS 150c and it's a look at this three point one eight cents. these would be Us prices in like ten off quantity. and they got five hundred and fifty in stock.

And they're a catalog stocker. so they actually stock a lot of these like obscure brand things. and even like it drops down to two and a half cents in twelve thousand quantity for this eight pin micro. a The datasheet here is actually a Chinese datasheet.

Is this the datasheet you get from them but if you go to the manufacturers website which you can do, you can actually get the English datasheet for this thing and it's an 8 bit OTP Know that flash rubbish but once so one-time programmable. but hey they're like like three cents in spoke one of these in stock. Absolutely amazing. So what architecture they are and like, don't ask, can you get the programmer for it? Don't ask.

Can you get the development system for it? Will don't ask. will have to search the website I don't know I haven't done that yet. But anyway, if you were serious about getting cost down on a product, you wouldn't necessarily. You know if sense mattered you wouldn't necessarily be getting them from the big-name manufacturers cuz they can't.

Even though you know you can get little micro, you know, a little 5 pin stock, 23 microchip parts for like 30 40 cents. Okay, that's still an order of magnitude 10 times more than the cost of these things. But when you're talking about like low-cost micros like these ones often, you've got to take into account. well, how can you get a pre-programmed from the manufacturer because you can buy like pre-programmed ones from.

you know, Digi-key will provide them pre-programmed for you for a small service charge. Or you can get them direct from microchip for example, all pre-programmed And can we buy the programmer for this? And like you know it's it's obviously you've got to go in and learn the system, but for like a couple of cents. Like down in the two points. Something since for a couple of hundred quantity amazing and they're in stock, hold onto your hand.

Hang on. The P Ms-13 to the I/o types are 150 there in just the I/o type. but they don't have an 8-bit ATC but they've got a 12 bit ADC version the P Ms-13 212 channel 12 bit ADC with 1400 pins. Okay, so now we're talking and they have that in stock and that is you know, under seven cents in volume Wow with a 12 bit ADC Fantastic in an 8 pin s Oh Brilliant.

or is that no, it didn't say a penis? I What's going on? Hmm. Fourteen pin max Io: Something doesn't add up. Three hardware eleven bit PWM Generators Hardware comparator and 8x8 multiplier. Ah, now we're talking being Gap 1.2 volt Voltage reference 12 bit, 12 channel ADC Over 87 powerful instructions not wimpy instructions Powerful All four Yeah.

Eight PSO for like under seven cents Wow And there's other weird parts like this one. For example, manufacturer go Top this is actually in embedded peripheral ICS and font chips. They actually have chips with fonts built in. Here we go: Embedded Proof: Rice's font chips IO expansions, micro and supervisors, and real-time clock.

So if you want a really cheap real-time clock, freaking side track to here I Haven't looked at these. Let's go in there. Let's just sort by price here. Showery.

There you go. if you're paying too much for your real-time clock. There you go. Ten cents in five quantity.

They've got 9800 in stock 3900. Look at all the stock numbers on these. Absolutely. you know.

Absolutely incredible. We could certainly do big production volumes with this sort of stuff. So 150 more latent. Here we go.

Six points. So if you Ottoman big quantities, they got thirty-two thousand price breaks. Absolutely fantastic. Like this is like a serious website for, you know.

Asian Sauce parts and stuff like that. And that's the thing. If you go like, let's say that you wanted this: Patek PMS 150 C If you go to your usual parts search engines like Octo Part for example, you search for it. You won't get Jack because they're not your war, You'll get Jack because the hair never nobody.

Because they're They don't search for these more obscure Asian manufacturers. you know, you put it in to find chips. calm all your usual stuff. Nope, It's no, it's not a Piccolo microprocessor.

There you go. No, it's just. it's not getting the hit at all. that is not a correct hit.

It's not a Jst connector for example. So you know these things. You just won't find him unless you know where to look. And this is like a this LCSC website looks like a good springboard to actually find this sort of stuff.

So as I said, like looking for a real time clock. 10 cents if you're currently paying more than that or 8 cents or whatever. It was crazy. Anyway, I am.

this font chip is really interesting. Take a look at this that's actually God built in. Okay, this one's pretty pricey, right? It's an SPI memory array 20 down to 20 cents in quantity under go top. Let's just have a look, right? Cuz this is so who knew that? Go Top or Jenn Jenny top I don't know what's there, What's their actual name? Anyway I Haven't looked for an English version of this about We'd about.

We don't need it, but it's basically a like a SPI type interface. Let's have a look and it's got ASCII basic. So it's got 5 by 7 fonts, 5 by 10, 7 by 8, 6 by 12, 8 by 16, 12 by 24 for your larger displays and stuff like that. And if you're designing your project and you couldn't be bothered, like like trying to find an existing font or something like that, putting it into your micro troller memory, doing all that sort of jazz and you know, and speed wasn't a real, you know, maybe a huge issue and you just wanted a solution to give you a different scaled fonts, you can buy this chip.

Who knew that this existed, right? Absolutely fantastic. And for all these different Unicode Iso standard ones and stuff like that and look, you can go in there and you can see all the different fonts that they have and you can just read these out of the memory and dump them straight to your LCD you can. You know you map them, a simple mapping routine and stuff like that, but this is just absolutely brilliant. It's not just look, they've got the the sand script or whatever it is.

Yeah, like all the different like, not not just English fonts. so this is all pre-programmed into the chip. Isn't that neat. There you go.

It's like in just an SPI interface suite. Who knew that existed? You wouldn't know unless you actually went in and browsed font chips. Looks like they're the only manufacturer, but there you go. Terrific stuff.

So yeah, that's let's have a look at this paddock where they actually look. They've got a website, they're a Taiwanese manufacturer of micro controllers, and they've got technical application notes. Let's see if we can find some stuff, but if we have a look at the datasheet actually tells you what the part number of the programmer for this thing. because they're they're probably like a ripoff of a NATO like they're probably an even 805 100.

They're a ripoff of like a pic RISC architecture or you know, something like that. So let's have a look. So having a look at paddocks I Assume that's how you pronounce it. That's how I'll say it.

Anyway, there are there microcontroller selection guide The Rappy Dragon the MTP Series Rappy Dragon to K Words of Memory 128 K bytes Li None of these are like a real big serious SAP Microcontrollers They're all in like you know, sub like 8k sort of weren't Don't even think they've got an 8k word one in their entire portfolio. but they're designed as I said for these like little cheap, farting novelty gadgets where price is absolutely every for these are consumer gadgets and you can't afford to use a microchip or a T iPod or an arm part or whatever. It is just just the arm royalty. I'll just the royalty alone for choosing any arm part on the market would cost more than these chips cost I Mean this is just crazy.

You gotta remember, this is pricing from a catalog supplier in stock. This is not the price directly from the manufacturer imagined. like the margins on these, it's like it's It's unbelievable. Anyway, so the Pms 150 that we're looking at here.

it's You know it's only got a couple of I/o and stuff like that 1k word of program memory. It's available in a 6-pin SOT 23 available in different packages. nice. And then they got a commercial-grade temperature grade ones and you know stuff like that, so that's that's.

really pretty neat. And their website here very look. you can get them with 12 bit ABCs Very competitive price point. One eight hundred eighty nanometer process.

Good for battery power products. Not for a CRC step-down or high ripple or anything like that. So obviously there are. You know, rail ripple rejection is probably not terrific.

You know things like that, You'd have to be careful and like, yeah, who knows what sort of you know how refined these parts are. You just don't know in terms of not just silicon bugs. I Mean even you take any microchip or Atmel or a TI or any part they've got. They're riddled with silicon bugs too, so you know it's It's not just you buy a brand name and you're not guaranteed to get bugs and your chip and stuff like that, but you know this thing is like and good luck getting help on a forum.

We're saying no, something goes wrong with one of these parts. So I'm not recommending that you go out and use one, but it's just. it's just fascinating to look at. You know what stuff is available.

F-series are series. Anyway, back to this Pmf one: PM S 150 See right down the bottom of the datasheet. It shows program writing and it looks like you can get that's the part number for the programmer here. and if you go over to their website actually found some you know here it is the program writer.

Use a manual. There you go that looks pretty comprehensive. done that. There you go, There you go.

Look. It's as if it's a zip socket based. you know, really like old-school kind of. you know, tabletop ZIF socket programmer kind of thing.

But you know? I'm sure you could like USB interface rolling code. There's the software. it's all in English right? So you know it looks doable as long as you can get one of these programmers. Go back to the website here.

Development Tools: Here we go. They've got application notes. This is in the technical application section. Let's go over to the program writer.

So it's all here on the website. There it is. writer download. There's the software, the software.

There's the Safi where the program w3 there's a double O2 model as well. It does all these different chips there you go. Yep, so the double A three? well. the double O to download.

So there's the user manual for it and whether or not you can actually buy it I don't know, you just google e that and well yeah, your yo-yo ye cart buy it for sale cheap I don't know. Is it on Aliexpress or something? Yeah, 135 bucks. so it looks like Add to Cart There you go, we can buy it. Winner! Okay I was going to development tool so we get single ink or even though they've they've got an emulator, this multi-core in-circuit emulator, general writer, that's the program writer and the in-circuit emulator.

There you go. I Still don't know about the I Haven't looked at the architecture or the compiler or anything, but let's have a look at in a single-core I'm sure it's a single core, it's not going to be a multi core area. Go Pms 150c Yep. single core in-circuit emulator.

There you go. There's the IDE There's the IDE for it. No problems right? Can you get the the programming manual for this thing? This thing's looking useable. It's looking useable.

it's look at. You can buy the programmer it's in English You can buy the you can download the in-circuit emulator. so uh it's in Chinese again Mandarin I did sorry people correct me on that. It's not Chinese it's Mandarin sorry.

It's like it's just common how we say it. How we call it here, now it is I Love the sticker on it. It's real. sort of you know do-it-yourself how you doing kind of thing.

I Love it I Love it I I Want to support him just because of this? I'm sure they sell like millions of these microbes. Tens of millions of them to you know, hundreds of millions maybe? who knows what their volumes are. And check this out. Download: APN I guess that's what they call application notes Output impedance of a DC Signal source over voltage protection IO Output to a long wire I assume that's like one wire and semi-automatic water writing handler fix of over voltage setting l Vo level fast wake up node application it here.

Here we go. just a random one. paddock against rapid charge in power I Love this. In some cases the power VDD may oh ok, right it's about to brown out in the VDD manually in case the video drops to a level is lower than the LVD about higher than one volt of this time in port.

again lower than maybe some chance. The okay so it's an application note saying yeah, What that it happens if you get a brown out on your power rail. If it, you know your five volt or 3.3 volt I didn't even check. Oh you can get eight levels of Iov.

Oh great. Great. It looks like yet four volts. It looks like it'll work from five because a lot of micros these days don't work from my you know anything yeah to two to five operating vault.

There you go: Internal oscillator so you can get yet internal clock divider board the divided by two so it's actually a 16 mega internal but looks of it to give you or I max 8 min, 0 max 8 0 system clock. Anyway it's gonna low power mode 662 kilohertz at 5 volts meet I I'm liking this power on reset voltage operating current they take 13 microamps in power-down mode. You know it's not the best thing out there, but good enough. point.

Three milliamps there you go. 16 megahertz. That's versus frequency change by a huge amount. She'll be right, no worries and drift as well.

Fully characterized these parts. It's not how you're doing. they're serious about characterizing their parts. This is pretty good.

I Do you know almost starting to want to use one of these I'd have to do a separate video. Give me a thumbs up and comments down below. If you want me to do a separate video on this, actually getting one of these and trying to actually develop a project with a two-cent microcontroller $0.03 microcontroller. It's got a comparator internal voltage reference in a little five pin SOT 23 Fantastic Doesn't have an ADC 64 bytes of RAM It's got a 16 bit timer, 8 bit timer does do PWM That's nice.

You know if you just want a little 5 pin micro for example little SOT 23 that all it does is generate a PWM or something like that for a couple of cents. Killer! If you can get all of these pre-program you're probably can I'm guessing if you contact them because it would cost more of course in labor to get them programmed at your assembly house you would buy If you're getting these microwaves like this so cheap, you just get them one time programmed at the factory factory program. They come on the real pick-and-place machine and it just does that one job it just generates, you know, an 8 kilohertz Pwm signal or just exactly what you want in your product. And you don't have to dick around with doing that in your main processor in your product.

You can just do that with this. like fantastic and six I/o pins. Every I/o pin can be configured to enable the wakeup function that's flexible. one external.

oh, it's got hardware interrupts, Pimp 79, powerful instructions, one processing unit operating mode. Most instructions are one execution cycle because that doesn't mean clock cycle so you'd have to look at the details. They're programmable stack pointer or data memory available as an index pointer for all you programming nerds out there who will appreciate some of that stuff. and you get a 23-6 Si wait, are you getting a dip dip? Hang on I Just downloaded the IDE development environment.

it was a single XE it was only 7 Meg long I it said just installed, done and and it instantly popped up. Let me I'm gonna have to shut the screen to drag it out. Look, look at this. It just instantly popped up and what's going on here.

Code generate OTP Writer: Okay so this it looks like it's a this is the help Okay so this is the readme help. It's automatically loaded up the readme help. Hang on Kyle look at this. it's got cogeneration for the UART spy.

you weren't with buffer so let's let's go to like if I wanted a spy bus for example. Ah Me is fantastic I can set the pin I want I can set the pin the SDI pin and the bit 3 copy to Clipboard master or slave can figure out fantastic and this was like 8 Meg it was just Nate Meg tool and it just I don't know where it is stored the fight I think it maybe just ran, maybe it's an executable that just but it said it installed but I don't say where or anything and this is this is great copy to clipboard and just paste our there it is. There's our code, there's our code for our UART that's sorry for us by bus code Wizards out there David Come here. David's here.

Hey he's a resident code expert. Tell us about this code. what does it look like? Tell us your thoughts, rows their thing, pray he's mentally processing what would you need to know up? Why would you need to know? Probably for a delay. Well, it has to be.

There's no other reason. Yeah, there's no other reason. Well though, they've got this delay thing here. sir.

dot delay for does this make any sense to you? Yeah, it's a bit banging thing. Well yeah, yeah it has to because it doesn't have a hardware a spy. so it's a bit banging thing. but it's it's obviously in C it's like assembly and see or something.

Wait, where's the assembly? I don't know I say did that know that? I'd have to get it. Okay, kind of strange. could be a macro. I mean there is this turret it? No, it goes to there.

we go anyway. So that's kind of weird is it doesn't make sense, but it generates a code for you. Yeah, it's a bit weird. They've got the bits at the top, which, yep, kind of assembler do you ask.

but well, no, that's just a sign. In days they get those from a header file somewhere. wouldn't they pull those for a header? but yeah, I don't know. we'd have to debug.

Can we execute? Can we compile code yet? No. Okay, generate debug. That's great. but like, wait, where's the compiler? like? Well, like I don't Can you compile from here or is it like this is what? I don't know.

Oh, that's where it looks like it installed it to that subdirectory there. So anyway, there's our help file. What are these? dot 36 r4 Are these like order? It's not just the changelog, Is it? Oh, it's the changelog. Yes, Yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right.

it's the changelog. Yep, it is. Point Eight Three is the version. That's right.

there you go. This is great. He's written kind of strange. Yes.

FP PA is an epoch-making product that contains multiple micro processing units in each ear. What? It creates A positive. obviously. after learning the FP P Ba Fpp a trademark instructions, the system designer will enjoy the pleasure that is provided by the power of multi-core architecture.

Yeah, this is single coil, but they do sell multi-core chips. This is hilarious. We're certainly into the brave new world as well. Look peers, team else.

You can get in like Ps2 mouse code, just generate it. Think these things have like hardware interrupts on the pins and everything. It's pretty neat. It was pretty neat.

Yeah. I think we have to do a project with this. What do you think? Yeah. I'm pretty sure we do.

Yeah, what is the compiler? What does it use? I don't know I haven't figured that like completely normalcy I I haven't Yeah I haven't like it was it, you know KN RC Oh there you go. Fuel Application Engineering Patty If you want support, no workers? Yes general word general its general to finds the entry point for console application. Anyway, we are baffled by this, but well. I think we might have to get one of these programmers and try and actually get this thing.

We're gonna have to order a lot of chips. Luckily, they're cheap because they're one-time programmable. No this flash rubbish. You can't just reprogram them so we got a bit.

Good thing is it's got the in-circuit emulator. We should be able to emulate the thing before we actually one time program it. This just looks fun to play with. Three cent microcontroller in volume in stock from what looks like you know, the mini Chinese digi-key and there's so many other things on here that we could you know go through.

But there's lots of these manufacturers around that make these micro controllers and other special-purpose application chips that you're just not aware of. and you know it's worth the browse on here and just having a look at what's available. Like let's have a look at. you know, Sin Ret.

There's 20 different devices from Sin Wet, Arm Cortex-m 0 manufacturer, Phocion, Sin Wit Tech and there you go. They're the 60 and a thousand off quantities. you're talking a 60 cent. It's not hugely cheap, but it is an Arm Cortex-m 0 microcontroller and like available anyway.

There's a whole new world out there of you know. your average engineer in the west just has no visibility and stuff like this because you won't find him on your digi keys your mouse as you found out was your RS you won't find him in on fine chips and opto part or you know anything like that and you've got to go direct to the Chinese are suppliers or know the manufacturers yourself. There's so many of these different things out there and you can get this sort of stuff in stock. Absolutely fantastic.

So if you like that video, please give it a big thumbs up. As always, comment down below or over on the EEV bug forum. and if you want me to get one these programmers and actually try and get a project up and running with this mythical three cent microcontroller that you can get in stock I might have to buy all this stock obviously I won't like I want to use more than five hundred and might if we go for one of the bigger models that has you know or I might just order put in an order for like a full reel that full true by becoming tube Tubes tubes. now this real rubbish tubes and three cents each.

Give me a break Anyway, hope you liked the video. Catch you next time.