Atmel AVR microcontrollers are a major player in hobby electronics.

They are great for prototyping because:

• They come in many DIP, breadboardable form factors
• They are relatively cheap.
• There is an extensive online community built around them.

There are many great brands and families of microcontrollers, including the “PIC” line from Microchip, the MSP430 family of microcontrollers from Texas Instruments, and many others. This guide focuses on the AVR line microcontrollers from Atmel, a Norwegian semiconductor designer.

All AVR chips can be divided into 4 main groups. Only 2 are available in DIP formats.

Tiny's are the low-cost branch of the AVR family.

Mega's are the most popular AVR family with hobbyists. Most Arduino model are powered with an ATmega.

The xMEGA is somewhat newer family that has not yet made a huge impact in the hobbyist embedded electronics world.

The AVR32 family of chips have little to do with the 8 bit families, other than branding.

If you want to prototype on a solderless breadboard, the easiest type of microcontroller to use is the “DIP”, or “Dual-Inline-Package” form of the chip when available. Atmel