Multi part post with easy newb questions.

The first time I tried to post this, it wouldn’t let me. It said something about using a forbidden word, so I will try to post it in pieces, as it is pretty long.

Here’s the first piece:

I didn’t see a beginners section, so I posted here. Forgive me if it is in the wrong section.

Fasten your seatbelts because this is a long post.

My goal is to make custom analog style gauges for my car (and to learn along the way). I plan to use stepper motors for the needle movement, hence the microcontroller interest.

I want to make each gauge stand-alone instead of creating one box and plugging all of the gauges into it.

Q1. What microcontroller do I use?

Hold the flames please. I know this could really set some people off so let me narrow it down a little. I’ve done some research and decided to go with AVR. However, there are many AVR’s to choose from as you know. I believe that my application will be a piece of cake for pretty much any microcontroller but before I go buy parts, I would like to run it by people with experience. The sensor inputs range from analog to digital and -5V to +13.5 V or so, but I believe the highest rate of input (pulses/sec) is about 1KHz, coming from the speedometer. The following features would also be needed:

-The package would need to be solderable at home. I have a metcal with a pretty small tip, but I’m still thinking something that plugs in would be best.

-It needs to handle an automotive environment.

-The easier it is to drive a stepper motor the better

-Must have enough room for the code.

-Must be relatively inexpensive, hobby style package.

-I’d like to expand the microcontrollers duties from taking in a signal and controlling the stepper motor, to also, data logging the readings, adding a user calibration ability, and possibly a nifty start-up/shut-down “dance.” So I’d like to interface with say USB to program it and it would need to interact with some type of memory.

Ok, I’ve just discovered that the ATmega168 does have a dip form factor. Didn’t see that in the spec. However, I still don’t know why it would be better or worse for my application.