How to shrink my pi3 program into a single chip?

[winheartz]

I would like to shrink my pi3 program into a simple chip/microcontroller. Can any one tell if this can be done?

I see that such a process is available for moving Arduino programs to single microcontroller.

[scotty101]

What type of program is it?

Depending on the type of thing you are doing you may find that the microprocessor/controller doesn't have enough throughput/memory space to deal with the program. Converting the program may rely on you making some optimisations/simplification to the code for example floating point mathematics aren't directly supported on many microprocessors.

If it is a simple program written in C then you might be able to just change a few function calls and the code will work on a platform like arduino or similar microcontroller.

More information from you required.

[rpdom]

That somewhat depends on the complexity of your program and what interfaces it uses.

Moving from an Arduino (a high end microcontroller with a fixed set of programming options) to a lower powered microcontroller may be easy, but moving from a full computer like the Pi may be a bit harder or even not possible.

What does your program do and what language is it written in?

[winheartz]

I'm new to using Raspberry Pi. Just started with my first program. My program is a basic LED blinking program written in python script

[B.Goode]

I'm new to using Raspberry Pi. Just started with my first program. My program is a basic LED blinking program written in python script

And what is the 'simple chip' that you hope to move that code to?

You could do something similar with a micro:bit that runs the micropython interpreter.

[mikerr]

"Arduino" covers a lot, but many projects can be reduced to using a single bare ATmega328 chip, or the dinky 8 pin Attiny85

On ARM/pi you could use a Pi Zero to reduce size / chip count...

But you need to tellus what your project is, and which features of the pi3 you're using.

<grumpy old man talk:>
As an aside it does make me laugh (or groan) seeing "blinky LED" projects using a CPU chip which contains 100,000 transistors

[rpdom]

<grumpy old man talk:>
As an aside it does make me laugh (or groan) seeing "blinky LED" projects using a CPU chip which contains 100,000 transistors

555 or LM3909? Or do you prefer a handful of transistors, capacitor and resistors?

[piglet]

Reminds me of this - he bought an IBM Z890 mainframe and ran Lynx text based web browser on it! An atom bomb to crack a nut.

https://blog.adafruit.com/2016/04/05/ib ... mainframe/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45X4VP8CGtk

[DougieLawson]

Reminds me of this - he bought an IBM Z890 mainframe and ran Lynx text based web browser on it! An atom bomb to crack a nut.

I've met that lad that bought a mainframe and installed it in his basement. He's now got a job working for IBM in Poughkeepsie on the next generation of mainframes.

[Heater]

Do you mean this lad?

Here's What Happens When an 18 Year Old Buys a Mainframe? The story of Connor Krukosky:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45X4VP8CGtk

Damn impressive.

Edit: Sorry, just noticed you included that link in your post already.

A friend told me that back in the 1970's his High School acquired some old mini computer or mainframe. I forget what exactly. He was all set to try and get it working. He was heart broken to find, on returning from holiday, that it had been stripped down for parts.

[Heater]

winheartz,

If you want to continue to use Python and your programs are not getting too big you might like to look at Micro-Python.
https://micropython.org/

There is the original PyBoard micro-controller system. And as noted above Micro-Python is also usable on the Micro:Bit and a few other boards if I remember correctly.

[Heater]

mikerr,

As an aside it does make me laugh (or groan) seeing "blinky LED" projects using a CPU chip which contains 100,000 transistors

Blinking a LED is the traditional way to first verify that your hardware setup and software tool chain is working properly. It's the "Hello World" of embedded systems.

Blinking a LED is a respectable way for a beginner to start experimenting with any new hardware and programming language. Especially if they have never programmed before.

What was the first thing I did when starting to get familiar with FPGAs and hardware design with Verilog this year, using a chip with 22000 Logic Cells? I got it to blink a LED.

Laughing or groaning is not appropriate.