A practical checklist for selecting a microcontroller or microprocessor for an autonomous vehicle project. Covers key decision factors including voltage requirements (3.3V vs 5V), power supply options (battery vs AC), price, memory and storage constraints, chip availability, I/O pin counts, and processing capability (8-bit vs 32-bit). Walks through real hardware examples the author owns: Arduino Uno, Arduino Mega 2560, Parallax Basic Stamp, Parallax Propeller, TI MSP430, Intel 8051, BeagleBone Black, and Raspberry Pi, with brief notes on each. Also touches on when to step up to a single-board computer with Linux and RTOS for more demanding sensor and vision workloads.
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