[Gdeaver]

Programming a micro controller in C or assembler requires expertise and time for a project. People who can do this are an expensive asset. If you want to see a innovative solution to the development cost, look at Cypress semi and their PSOC micro controller. They wrote a development environment called PSOC express. Its a high level graphic design environment similar to Lab view. They have a high level state machine tool that allows a complex high level control design that takes out the low level complexity. You should really look at the coffee maker example to see how a graphical high level data flow tool can speed up the design process. The software and examples can be down loaded for free. In the future we will see more and more design tools that will allow us to concentrate on the behavior of a system at a high level and shield us from the costly low level stuff.