Price of minimal MegaDrum kit & PIC vs. AtMega

[Cysign]

Hey fellows
haven't been here for some years.
But as I recently found my old MegaDrum module laying around I got the idea of building another electric drumkit - which I'm going to start, soon.
But also I wonder what a minimalistic module might cost by today.
There's been a switch from AtMega to Pic controllers (for what reason?).

So I'm sure there won't be any updates for my old module (even can't remember which chip it's using ).

Is the Pic controller faster or better in any way? Or is it just in case of copyprotection of the firmware?

[ignotus]

Hi there, welcome back
You can check the price of different options in this same forum. The change wasn't to a PIC but to an ARM processor. It runs at 120 MHz as opposed to the 16/20 MHz of the Atmega, has more memory and a few other things. The firmware started to be encrypted back in 2010 I think, so the latest firmware you can install on your Atmega board will date back to then. You can either send Dmitri your Atmega chip so he can load a special bootloader on it to update to the latest firmware (assuming he still does that), or you can buy an ARM board to get all the latest hardware improvements, including a bigger colour screen.

[Cysign]

Well, I remember the incryption-stuff. I already sent him my AtMega somd years ago
20110621 is my firmware - not sure if there's any newer.
Have searched the board shortly but didn't find any information about pricing...

[ignotus]

You have prices here, here, here and here.

You have the latest firmware here. Provided it's an Atmega 644 or above you can load the latest firmware.

[Cysign]

Thanks for your help! So 'Minimal Lite kit - 75GBP' + shipping would be the cheapest option.