Microcontrollers for your electronic projects

We offer microcontrollers with a wide range of architectures, in various performance classes and in a variety of designs at reasonable prices. Browse through our wide range of developer modules for an easy entry into the world of microelectronics.

Our Arduino compatible boards like the Nano V3 or our Pro Mini offer a solid and versatile project base.

The core functionality of the more powerful boards in the ESP family has been extended to include a practical WiFi interface. Products with ESP32 processor also have an integrated Bluetooth function, as well as a dual-core CPU.

Our D1-Mini series microcontrollers are available with both ESP8266 and ESP32 modules. There are many shields (accessories) with identical design in a practical plug-in system.

The boards of the NodeMCU series have been specially developed for use with the NodeMCU operating system and allow programming in the LUA language.

The Raspberry Pi, with its powerful System-on-a-Chip (SoC) and many interfaces, forms the upper end of our range. Due to the available GPIO pins, the Raspberry can also take over functions of an Arduino-compatible board.

"Arduino" in most cases describes the physical computing platform. The Arduino platform consists of free hardware and software components. Arduino compatible hardware refers to developer boards with identical processor and pinout and installed bootloader as the original product.

All Arduino-compatible boards can be programmed with the Arduino IDE (software). The Arduino IDE hides the complete toolchain under the plain interface. In some cases, however, an additional driver installation may be necessary.

An Arduino clone is a developer board that has been manufactured, sometimes with minor modifications, according to the layouts and schematics of Arduino LLC.

The special feature of the ESP8266 and its successor, the ESP32, is an almost completely hardware-implemented TCP/IP stack. This is advantageous for users because the software-side effort required to use the WiFi function can be reduced to a minimum. For example, in some programming environments, a WiFi access point can be created with just a few lines of code.

Our NodeMCU boards are evaluation platforms for the free operating system NodeMCU. Even though these modules can also be programmed with the Arduino IDE in C or C++ or with the Thonny IDE in Micropython, the use with the NodeMCU operating system and LUA is particularly comfortable. The software was created for the ESP8266 by Espressif. However, there are now also beta versions that are compatible with the new ESP32 architecture. One of the advantages of this solution is that the operating system with the desired modules can be configured, compiled and downloaded via a website.

The D1 Mini is a practical plug-in system with minimalist dimensions. In addition to the ESP processor, the boards contain a fixed-voltage regulator and a USB serial chip with minimal circuitry in order to maintain the compact design with the powerful processor. In the meantime, the D1 Mini series has also been extended by a module with ESP32.

The D1 Mini boards can be used with the Arduino DIE in C/C++ as well as with the Thonny IDE in Micropython or with ready-made firmware such as Tasmota or ESPEasy. For these boards we have many practical shields in our assortment for easy plugging onto the D1 Mini modules.

As a powerful mini PC, the Raspberry Pi can control robotics projects or act as a media center or thin client. The Raspberry Pi is also popular as a small server in home networks. Several different operating systems and pre-configured images are currently available.

With the help of its GPIO pins, the Raspberry Pi can take over tasks from the range of applications of an Arduino board, even if the effort for configuration and programming is higher.

FAQ

What is a microcontroller? Simply explained...

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