We might just never get tired of covering cool small cheap MCUs, and CH552G sure fits this description. Just so you know, here’s a Hackaday.io project you should check out – a CH552G devboard that’s as simple as it sufficient, in case you needed a tangible reminder that this chip exists, has a lively community, and is very much an option for your projects.
The devboard design by [Dylan Turner] is so straightforward, it’s almost inspiring – a square of PCB with the chip in the center and plenty of empty space for your mods. Everything is open-source with KiCad sources stored on GitHub. The most lovely aspect of this board, no doubt, is having the pin mapping written on the bottom, with all the alternate pin functions – you won’t have to constantly glance at the datasheet while wiring this one up. Plus, of course, there’s the microUSB port for programming, and the programming mode button that a few CH552 projects tend to lack.
It’s simple, it’s self-documenting, it’s breadboardable, and it’s definitely worth putting into the shopping cart at your PCB fab of choice. Oh, and there are bringup instructions on GitHub, in case you need them. Whether you want to prototype the cheapest macropad or keyboard ever, or perhaps a reflow hotplate, the CH552 delivers. If these CH552 projects aren’t enough to light your fire, here are a dozen more.
Otherwise you a breakout board:
http://zoobab.com/ch552g-blink
I’d prefer something in between. Just a socket adapt to DIL is a bit of a nuisance. For a breakout board, I would at least expect on board decoupling caps, a programming header and some other small things to get it going, such as cristal, reset circuitry and an USB connector in this case.
Fortunately such breakout boards are very common too. A simple search on Ali brings up loads of breadboard compatible breakout boards like this for around EUR 1. But I do not consider that cheap. It’s the other way around. Someone would have to pay me, and pay handsomely for me to do anything with 8051 architecture.
How about this: https://discord.com/channels/879434765390975007/904810469645250610/1234609764206510242 (link to message on the HaD discord server channel #show-and-tell)
neat little chips. I’ve got a handful kicking around, but have more recently been shifting toward the CH32X033 – the price of 55x’s has been steadily rising, and the RISC-V CH32X is just so much more pleasant to work with than 8051-based mcus.
Oooo I hadn’t heard of the CH32X. I’ll have to check it out!
Very true. Support for this family is being added to ch32v003fun, FWIW.
If I wanted 8-bit MCUs I’d buy PIC16 or ATmega. No reason to support those who supply dual-use items to Putin and his army of thugs. Anyway, who needs 8-bitters when STM32 gets the job done (and is made in EU).
Is there a demo code on how to transmit some ADC data to the USB interface?
There’s arduino support (limited to C) in ch55xduino: https://github.com/DeqingSun/ch55xduino So you could quickly make one.
I haven’t programmed a 8051 core in the past 36 years.
(Don’t think I’m 36 years old. I did program the 8051 in ’87 and ’88. )