The device I have in mind consists of a microcontroller, a tilt senor, speaker, vibration motor, led, and possibly an lcd monitor. The final device will be required to detect movement through the tilt sensor. When no movement is detected, a timer will start. Once the timer reaches its programmed amount, an alarm will go off which will be handled by the vibration motor and speaker. If movement is sensed by the tilt sensor, the device will be required to restart the timer and/or shutoff the alarm.
There are so many different types of microcontrollers that I have no idea which one will function the best and be inexpensive at the same time.
Welcome to the RobotShop Forum. There is certainly a large and growing selection of microcontrollers, and we hope to soon release a microcontroller comparison table in order to help you select the right one. A digital tilt sensor would only need one digital pin while an analog tilt sensor would need one digital pin. A speaker (buzzer) only needs one digital pin.If the vibration motor is small and the current is low, you don’t need a motor controller in most cases and can get away with using a digital or PWM pin. an LCD monitor, depending on which you choose, would need either four pins (serial, V and GND), 8 digital pins (parallel LCD), or I2C… Therefore your microcontroller would need 4 digital pins plus serial communication, Vout and GND, as well as a timer. Almost all microcontrollers with the exception of a few Picaxe chips have all of these. You can select a brand then a price and you should be fine.
