Thirty plus years of software development taught me that Ctrl-S is your friend.

An introduction to RISC-V assembly with Dave trying to toggle a pin as fast as possible would be fantastic!

This reminds me of the early days of STM8, ESP8266 and a few others Community making better HALs, figuring out all of the little quarks, even making better compilers, i very much live for this

WCH-LinkE is not a generic USB to serial interface. It is a CH32V305 microcontroller implementing the single wire debug protocol used on the V003. Yes, technically that is serial, but it isn’t just a pass through buffer.

10¢ RISCV - truly a milestone in the cost-value proposition of 1000x ENIAC on a chip for 10¢ 😳 thx for keeping us up-to-date!

Great to see them using a normal GCC compiler and not some obscure proprietary stuff

MounRiver is the short for mountain and river, it means 天圆地方，山河相依。If you translate it directly, it means, round sky and square earth, mountains and rivers depend on each other.

Since it's using an external toolchain, it cannot build something that is not saved to disk. Therefore, you need to save the file before build. The hex file not being rebuilt is either you forgetting to save the source code or a bug in the vendor SDK ("make" target dependency missing).

I love how they describe their logo, they must be *really* proud of their design 😀

I'm thrilled to see more on this, probably testing basic features like uart, timers, i2c etc....

Wrote around Christmas a riscv emulator for Python, 32bit CPU, RV32i ISA and RV32M extension support. The base instruction set(RV32i) is comparable with something like the older AVR attiny instruction sets, very barebone, but it does the trick. For example it doens't have MUL or DIV in the base set(RV32I), that is in the RV32M extension. So yes it can be made very cheap,

WCH is one of the only chinese electronic companies that I like. They make a lot of niche but useful to hobbyist components like a USB host that uses parallel Intel bus.

One of the very few companies that actually reply your email and support the customer!

Printing the 'Getting to blinky" document would be more expensive that the microcontroller itself :) Nice demo!

They've made it just so easy compared to my old school days of using to burn a UV EPROM and plug it into a socket on the PC board. Back in those days too, you had no sample code and had to create the include files yourself... oh joy!.... pre internet days as well, so you had to get a printed reference manual.... oh.. and you had to write your code in assembler (machine code)... without any debugger!

I like these part selection/catalogue shopping videos. Honestly I find it to be one of the most annoying and time consuming parts of building a project sometimes. There's just so many options lol Great stuff, keep it up!

That's actually a really cool little chip. Might have to look into it at some point. Love the open source toolchain!

This IDE takes me back to the Codewarrior times when you had a slick win98 Style environment, before the migration to Eclipse. There was a P&E IDE for the QT8 microcontrollers that were a breeze to use, I still have the Cyclone. Now back to my grave.

that hardware abstraction API looks like what I had to work with when I did STM32 work. the first RISCV cores I saw were placed in STM32 clones. makes sense that they stick with established APIs and aren't just pin-compatible physically but also register-compatible to existing devices.

I would love to see more about this Dave 👍

eevblog right on top of the techno curve!!

I started with the 4004 which we paid $480 for and another $100 for the translation chips (4001 & 4002) from Pmos to Cmos or ttl. It's amazing they sell them for sub $1. Obviously they will go broke in a real economy as the FAB can't be paid off with no profit. I would start with buying the hardware and writing a stand alone compiler for the RISC V using my PC. Sounds like a good project for me in the future. Cheers - great Blog -

Hi, Dave. Long time Eclipse user here 😊I haven't done development in C programming language for some time, but the general M.O. of IDEs is to automate some (or most) of the complex software process/workflow. But the assumption is that the developer using an IDE is aware of (at least most of) the steps in the workflow. To save the time it takes to build the actual binary (compiling, linking, optimizations, etc.) most IDEs support incremental compilation where only the modified files are compiled and then linked with a previously compiled/built pieces that were cached. But given the number of moving parts the build workflow has, even without the incremental features, the "Project >> Clean" action is there to take care of the famous "my tool is stuck" issues. An IDE can be configured to automatically save any modified editors before actually performing the build, so you might opt-in for that one. Or even to automatically save modifications to a file when the keyboard input "stops long enough". Also, "automatically compile/build on save" is an opt-in feature of some IDEs. But if one considers these automation features and the complexity of the workflow, one could conclude there is no "incremental build" - building the actual deliverable binary involves much more CPU/RAM/DISK intensive activities compared to compilation, so it doesn't make sense to start-and-clean-up-on-cancelation every couple minutes on auto-save. That is most likely the reason you didn't always get the HEX file after "incremental build". The Eclipse itself is a customizable and modular software platform, i.e. for creating any kind of desktop software, but it is most widely known as a Java/C/C++/PHP IDE thanks to the modularity. Years ago I watched a National Geographic documentary on NASA Mars rovers where it was explained how NASA plans a rover's route, and the software they were using was Eclipse with custom plugins 😁

Very excited for the partridge in the pear tree!

I very much enjoy these microcontroller videos. :)

Thank you for the review .

Every time you were building the project, it was building the two (or more) projects you had open at the time, so taking longer. It's quite annoying that Eclipse comes with Ctrl-B set as "Build all projects" instead of "Build current project". It's one of the first things I change when using a newly installed Eclipse based IDE.

Very interesting, Dave. I have a couple generations of SiFive RISC-V SBC's. Nice to see micro-controllers appearing at a good price point. Do a SRCH for "cnlohr on risc-v" here. He wrote an RISC-V emulator in C and used buildroot to get the 400-500 lines of RISC-V C emulator to boot linux and give you a command prompt right on you linux PC. It is freaking amazing.

Looking forward to using this chip!

Great video Dave!

Sweet, we will be giving that a try. Have a great day everyone.

would be great to have a video breaking down the fundaments of adcs. The types, error sources, input signal conditioning and such.

I love Eclipse, mostly because I can rightclick almost any identifier in a project and hit 'show call hierarchy', 'go to declaration', or other neat code-parsing tricks.

Wish I had one of these in High School in 1982. Amazing!

hope many manufacturers move on to this cheaper hardware. thank you dave for showcasing this. might as well jump to this risc-v bandwagon if it becomes easily available for cheap

I was browsing these guys a few wees ago and I thought they had quite the nice selection of low cost MCUs. BLE, networking, motor or display driving. Basically if your main MCU is missing a feature or you need something very low power they have something that will fit your needs.

As usual, software support is king. AFAICT, the easy part is making the silicon, the hard part is building the community support, tool chain, software experience, etc.

It's crazy how far things have come in the last 10-15 years. The last time I programmed a micro in anger was an AT90S2313 with all of 2K flash and a whopping 128 bytes of SRAM, you practically *had* to use assembler in order to cram all you needed into that space, it's nice to have the luxury of a high level language for a chip at an affordable price. I can imagine there are some old grackles on here that will be rolling their eyes and going "Baaah! back in my day we had to write everything in ones and zeroes, and before that we didn't even have zeros and had to use the letter 'O'" (to paraphrase a Dilbert cartoon)

I ordered the evaluation kit and finally received it. Only issue I had was to get the MounRiver IDE to generate a hex file. I dug into the Settings an found the setting under "GNU RISC-V Cross Create Flash Image/General. I selected Intel HEX in the drop down and all is well. Thanks for the Video I was looking for a device that did not require the investment of the Keil development software. Thanks to you and WCH!

Thanks for sharing.

Interesting idea, Dave. It's nice to see that microcontrollers are coming at a good price.

The STM8 standard I/O library was fairly incomplete. i re-wrote much of the library before fiding someone else had done exactly the same. ST (like AMD) are great at making silicon, but not so good with software. So I wouldn't be too surprised to see ST make a RiscV implemementation, as they need not worry about software. The kings of the MCU software have been PIC, but from what you show me, this isn't too far from PIC in terms of ease of use. This architecture (looking at Mhz) perhaps sits between STM8 and STM32. The STM32 is ARM based, and ST could save money on licencing costs, so we could see a merge in those low and mid-end MCU offerings in a Risc V product line. A scalar lower speed to replace STM8 and a higher clock and instruction pipelining and other logic trick superscalar basic instruction set RiscV to replace STM32 with the same tool chain accross the product line.

Nice video, thank you for sharing it :)

Forgot to say "Great video, Dave!" previously 🤦‍♂ Keep up the good work. Cheers.

brilliant! Love your videos..

The prices is completely crazy. I teach EE131 (first year Digital Electronics) at a local university and basic digital ICs cost more than that. It is important they understand digital logic; but, the only place they are likely to ever use it is in an FPGA design. I recently helped someone debug a Space Invaders Arcade Game and most of it is done with MSI logic (counters, etc.) and only one Microprocessor (which probably cost more than all the other ICs combined). Things have certainly changed.

Great inspiration dave, I have been looking for alternatives since there are no SAMDs nor STM32s on the market right now.

Damn, that's a *lot* of value for just 10 cents! I'm already even somewhat familiar with the Eclipse IDE, since I like to use STM32 MCUs, so it should be a breeze for me to start using these as well.

That's awesome and with very little risk! :D I need to get back into this stuff, even though I still get flashbacks from the IDE. :)

Blink (LED Flasher) FTW - nice job Dave!

Yes, please do a video regarding the debug options! Really hope there is a way to debug it line by line, but not really optimistic since a lot of the more expensive chips don't have it either.

I remember prototyping with the PIC 16F54 in the mid 2000s with

I just took apart yet another dead led edison bulb and started knocking the led chips off. I was thinking about hooking up 4 of them in a (physical not electrical) line to a ESP8266 to see like back and forth light tricks, pwm dimming etc. Will be hard to solder. I was hoping I could solder them to a header of some sort and plug it into a breadboard with the ESP8266. It works about the same as an Arduino using the Arduino IDE.

thanks for highlighting it and where to find it.

@8:31 The peripheral clock enable function on line 35: This looks similar to how peripherals function on STM32 chips, each peripheral (i.e a GPIO port/timer etc.) has a clock enable to it allowing the peripheral to be completely powered down. By default all peripherals have the clock disabled and have to be enabled one by one, so that only the peripherals you need consume power. It's likely the peripheral design on this chip follows a similar pattern to STM32 chips (and potentially other 32 bit ARM micros).

It looks fantastic for its price.

The "save thing" is an Eclipse quirk. Its always the first thing i change when i work with Eclipse, because i've been bitten too many times.

Bob is your Auntie... Pretty neat processor and IDE! Good find!

Amazing. I think that the expression "cheap as chips" now more accurately refers to integrated circuit chips, not potato chips - potato chips now sell for about $5-$7 per bag here in the US.

I would love to some more stuff with this chip:)

I lost it at the "partridge in a pear tree" part 😆

There's a YT video on Blink... now. ;) Great clip / info; I expect RISC-V will be to processors what Linux was to firmware though it's early days.

I just redesigned my little LED controller around a ESP32-C3, that variant is also based on Risc-V. Definitely gonna check these out too, not only is it cool that Risc-V is an open architecture, availability of Chinese parts seems to be a lot less variable than western parts have been recently (one of the reasons I switched my design from a SAMD to the ESP32C3..."supply chain").

Good explanation and demo. Eclipse, Netbeans et al have many peculiarities, sometimes you have to save, sometimes not, sometimes you have to double click to highlight / 'select' the project in the explorer window. A common gotcha is a work / temporary folder which stores the running file, a copy of the one you are viewing. On many occasions the view and work files 'lose connection' resulting in all sorts of oddities. You can test this by copying an older backup file into the Eclipse workspace, it will be ignored unless you open the file and edit it (just add a blank new line) and then save it. It could be much, much worse, have you ever tried the Arduino IDE, especially when trying to burn the bootloader or load a sketch into other IC's?

The best part of RISCV is the open source architecture, you can adapt to it for free and even modify it adding new extensions. For example i have a working core done on verilog for my fpga that work very well, it's a very simple architecture for designing on it. So even the core size gets reduced. Awesome.

Would like to see some examples of designing and developing software for it, and integrating hardware… what are all the functions of the risc instructions. Maybe build a slot machine, or some other type of hardware game that this thing can interface with.

This needs to be the future: how small, simple, and lightweight can we make our tech?

The RISC-V 1-wire debugging protocol of CH32V003 will be released soon :)

The new Pinecel soldering iron is using a RISC V with the same Iron OS. First one I’ve seen in the wild.

saving is necessary in order for make (or any other dependency tool) to pick up on the fact something is changed and need re-compilation.

Now imagine the potential of those super little beasts in 10 years or so!

Thats really cool!

I downloaded the EVT zip file for this chip but I cant seem to find examples for doing floating point or scientific calculations. Unlike Microchip PIC ("the boss"), the compiler guide is readily available and properly documented.

Dave, if you do more review of this kit please dive into live debugging and breakpoint operation. PIC and TI chips both support it, it saves a lot of time.

Excellent.

There should be an option in eclipse that saves automatically when you build.

We are testing this to add an automatic closing function to the bathroom ventilation fan. About 40% cheaper than comparable MCUs. Compared to the STM8, it's almost free.😁😁😁 My only concern is that if they don't last long and discontinue the product, the STM8 won't be a cost-effective alternative.

eclipse can be configured to auto save before build

The nice thing about the RISC-V situation is, the barrier for a vendor to just let you use an unmodified standard toolchain is very low. Making a source-compatible (with the competing STM product) library would be the last mile (and at first glance it looks very similar). Under all of that Eclipse goo, it's just running GNU make, and the problem with the "build" command is probably to do with an incorrectly written Makefile. No doubt a chip like this if it gains popularity will get an Arduino port.

Bit of a mangled RISC-V explanation there. It's indeed just an ISA, which means that you either get an open source core that implements this ISA, or you pay someone else (like SiFive) for the core, which means that you still pay license costs, especially for any IP blocks that are likely to be added to the processor.

Most ide / compilers don't build off of what you see in the editor but what you've saved / written to the filesystem because usually the ide integration is just the ide asking your operating system to run the compiler with some arguments set, it wouldn't have access to your ide's text editors running memory. So yeah, ctrl+s regularly. The confusing thing I've run into are projects that copy their source files over to the "build" for reference when debugging, then you're sat there making edits to fix a silly bug that only get overwritten when you build again.

I think this is the equivalent to the STM32F030F4P6 with I intend to use in one of my new projects. This was below 50 cent before the semiconductor shortage maybe as low as 30 cent but it is not at this time. But this RISC V is also not available not even at higher price so not an option probably but will keep an eye out for it. I still have to get the larger STMS32 microcontroller that I ordered in February 2021 so about two years ago.

WeAct Studio on AliExpress has a few boards using WCH chips like the CH582 and others.

Excellent

Kids these days need RISC-V to blink a LED, back in my day we only use flip-flop circuit

This gives me life

Wow, that looks like a way more welcoming toolset than Microchip Studio - and no bank switching anymore because it is 32 bit.

Cool to have something like that. I personally haven't played enough with my ESP32 and RP2040 µCs and don't really need these (especially while there's no IDE-free open build system yet, seems like), but maybe at some point… Thanks for showcasing the thing!

I was thinking, "Partridge in a pear tree," when you came out and said it. Spooky. BTW, I've noticed that we both sort of stumble our way through problem solving. But you seem to stumble in the right direction while I stumble in the wrong direction. :)

Awesome!

It's always exciting to see cheap Chinese micros! Thanks for sharing Dave! The lack of public source code of openocd is a bummer. If you want source code access, you need to email them.

This video really highlight the magic of Arduino, taking care of all the unnecessary fluff you need to think about just to put the MCU into a sane state to flash a led.

I just got my rp2040 controllers for a split keyboard I'm building, but it would be fun to go through the whole PCB design around one of these micro controllers

It is pretty cool, I found some 64k flash 48 pin MCUs in their offering that are on lcsc for about $1, but then let's say one spends a month developing a real product and then they dissappear unless you buy 100k units from the manufacturer... The chip I found lscs has 64 of them. That is not much. I also looked at other wch chips. Some have better availability (half a roll or so), most are out of stock, many have like a dozen available. Until it says something like 10k in stock it doesn't inspire much confidence.

The build system probably doesn't have the hex file as a dependency. How to fix that depends on what build system eclipse is using for your project .. its own, make, or maybe something else.

Hello. Congratulations on the channel. Can you tell me if it is possible to use an internal reference for the ADC on the CH32V008?

Obviously they borrowed the terminology and a lot of the specs from the STM32F0 line (not the STM8).

Please do more videos on this MCU

You can set Eclipse to 'build automatically' and its triggered after a save.

ARM is toast. Long live RISC-V!