Impressive knowledge. It would be cool to experiment with it but when I do microcontroller projects I usually wire the MCU board right next to the module I’m controlling. I can imagine though that it’s easier to put the microcontroller right next to a reliable power source and then use CAN to control/read/write the device/module from a further distance. But wait, why wouldn’t I use a wireless protocol instead?

For my ATTtiny 85 chips I have a Arduino shield that I wired up. For ATTiny 84 and ATMega 328p I have USB driven boards with ZIF sockets to make inserting/removing the microcontroller chips easier. Basically really cheap ones I found on Aliexpress years ago and they keep working just fine.

I was actually just reading about the different protocols that can be used to flash an unsoldered microprocessor and I came to the conclusion that I can flash most of the MCUs with hardware I already have. I can flash the ATtiny MCUs and ATmega MCUs with the Arduino Uno as an ISP using jumper wires. I can also flash one ESP32 with another ESP32 by, for example, loading an esp-usb-bridge or serial flasher firmware onto an ESP dev board and using it as a programmer. I can flash an MSP430 via JTAG or Spy-Bi-Wire using my Raspberry Pi Pico debug probe. My hardware covers almost all cases, the only thing I’m really missing is a programmer that supports PIC ICSP :/

I use a combination of the ArduinoIDE and the ArduinoCLI to program the chips, depending upon the project and how much effort I want in my build toolchain.

Usually, I use vscode + platformio and I can really recommend it.

the ATTiny 84/85 needs the least analog wiring support

My purchase list is this:

• 1x Seeed Studio XIAO ESP32-S3 Sense
• 2x Seeed Studio XIAO ESP32-C6
• 1x ATTiny 10+
• 1x Logic Analyzer
• 1x PIC ICSP programmer
• 1x CAN bus breakout