One of the best parts of attending Hackaday Supercon is the opportunity to chat with other like-minded people and see what they find interesting. Because odds are good that I'll find it interesting, too. A prime example this year was hearing about the SAM D series of microcontrollers developed by Atmel. It is now branded a Microchip product due to acquisition.

Since I was spending most of my time in the badge hacking area, "talking shop" usually meant talking about microcontrollers in one context or another. The heart of the Hackaday Superconference 2018 badge is a PIC32 processor, which doesn't seem to be particularly well-regarded among the people I talked to. I personally pledge no particular allegiance to one chip over another - my philosophy is that they're all tools with their own advantages and disadvantages. But that's not the same opinion held by everyone, and it's interesting to hear other opinions.

The PIC32 is a completely different architecture from the 8-bit PICs I've played with earlier.. PIC32 aim for a higher tier of products with higher functionality but also higher price. I had been aware of Atmel's AVR line of chips, though I have yet to play with them firsthand. As head-to-head competitor with Microchip PIC for many years, they too have a low-end 8-bit offering and a high-end AVR32 line. I was also aware that ARM-based chips like those used in the Raspberry Pi and my cell phone occupies an even higher tier, though they could reach as low as PIC32/AVR32 tier.

I was wrong: They can actually be downsized even further than that! I did not know ARM can be so flexible until conversations at Supercon. Chips with a Cortex-M0 core can be price and feature competitive with 8-bit PICs and AVRs. One such example being the SAM D series of controllers. The lowest end SAM D10 is available from Digi-Key for roughly a dollar each. They're not available in a breadboard-friendly DIP form factor for experimentation, but that can be mitigated by relatively inexpensive development breakout boards like the SAM D10 Xplained pictured below.

And the best part of learning this as part of a friendly Supercon crowd: When I honestly said I didn't know about the SAM D series, I didn't get an elitist "Oh you don't know? You are so out of touch" response, I got an excited welcoming "Oh you don't know? Well now you have something new and fun to explore!" This attitude makes a huge difference in community building.

[caption id="attachment_17202" align="alignnone" width="640"]ATSAMD10-XMINI SAM D10 Xplained Mini evaluation board, available from Digi-Key[/caption]