Soumendra wrote:
> Unfortunately, now I must assist in some considerable amount of
> development for RFID gadgets, a part of which is devoted to building
> replacements for the commercial RFID readers that came from the
> vendors.

There are a lot of different things called "RFID".  Active or passive?  Wha=
t
frequency?

> We have long term goals, and for the kind of things we plan to do, we
> would like to have the power to customize, and in general building a
> local eco system for RFID development seems like a fun thing to do.

Does this mean you want to develop your own receiver, tags, something else?

> THE CONFUSION
> So the trouble is, do I stick to PIC's or do I switch to Atmel
> (AVR's)?

Unless Atmel has a hardware peripheral for your RFID problem, there is
nothing inherent to the microcontroller to help with RFID.  Mostly use what
you're comfortable with and have your toolchain set up for.  However, two
points in favor of Microchip is that they have a great track record not
obsoleting parts after just a few years, and they have a broader product
line.

> and I am trying to choose for an RFID stack.

What exactly do you think this "stack" needs to do?  RFID is pretty simple
most of the time, in part because its so very cost senstive and there isn't
room for fancy protocols.  For example, I did a active RFID tag with just a
10F202 and a Melexis chip.  The PIC did all the bit generation and timing
and wiggled the carrier on/off key line all from firmware.  This included
the usual manchester wrapper stuff, a 32 bit ID, some status bits, and a 20
bit CRC checksum.


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