Orangutan microcontroller by Pololu

[Admin]

Has anyone ever used the orangutan microcontroller?
It looks really good and I am thinking of buying one.
Any known problems with it?

[Afroman]

Haven't heard of it either, but it does look really cute with that integrated LCD

[Admin]

You wouldnt by any chance know of any quality differences in Atmel vs PIC's would u?

[Afroman]

Quality differences? Well these are microcontrollers not cars. They are designed to run for like 80 years as long as you don't zap them with static electricity or kill them with heat or killl them with reversed power connections. So I don't think quality is really the word you were looking for. Was there some other characteristic you had in mind?

[Admin]

yea ur right. just couldnt think of another word for:
ease of use/simplicity
lack of bugs
more/better features than other controllers

so i called them up and apparently although they claim to have atmel MEGA168's, they only have MEGA8's on them right now. so i personally requested them to swap over . . . but they are charging me another $10 plus a 'we havnt tried it yet so your our first beta tester' guarantee to go with it . . .

so basically i ordered one, so ill know in a few weeks if this thing suxors or not

[Admin]

ok now that im using it, i have a few comments about it. i havnt used it much yet so these for now are more of surface observations

both external interrupt pins are occupied by the LCD. you would think 'o ill just swap out the LCD when I need to.' the LCD is permanently soldered onto the board tho!!!

there is no external timer! you are forced to use the much slower internal timer unless you go out and buy an oscillator/resonator/crystal thing with capacitors to make your own external timer. basically another $10 plus shipping. they really should invest in the external timer instead of leaving it off and decieving people with the 'not propagated' remark in the schematic. blah.

lack of sample code. AVR has a bunch, but unless you are advanced you are not going to understand all those pinouts. Pololu should include sample code.

good stuff: the board is really tiny tho. a 4th the size of the cerebellum controller, which is great for tiny robots. it also drains about 30mA when on with nothing running. everything on the board is surface mount.