I know Arduino programming software is compatible with certain chips. I want to ensure the chip I choose can take advantage of the huge code base already available in Arduino. I know Paul with the Teensy chose a much more powerful chip than a standard Arduino compatible chip, and yet made it work. How can I make my project compatible with the Arduino compiler?

There are useful boards from Silicon Labs (EFM32 series) that come with a complete (free) toolchain and all hardware documentation. Worth a look - I have used these quite a bit for embedded projects.

Thank you. I'll look them up today.  That's the other thing too. I'll be using Linux for the development, so I was hoping to pick a chip that had a free toolchain and other development tools. 

@Joshua Grupp I would consider picking something from Jay Carson's $1 micro article. https://jaycarlson.net/microcontrollers/

He recommended several that people should be trying out that aren't commonly chosen by hobbyists. He also comments on the ease of their development tool chains, which is definitely a factor you should consider. 

I read the article and found it very interesting. It's amazing how cheap a chip can be yet still be so capable. Some are documented a whole lot better than others.

Yes - I'm definitely inspired to look beyond the atmega and attiny families. SAMD10, EFM8 and MSP430 are definitely of interest. One of the MSP430 series has a built-in LCD display driver for very low power applications, which is interesting. 

My goal is a 32 bit processor, network capable (maybe wifi or Bluetooth if SOC), USB, external flash for bootloader & user program space.  I just need to pick a processor so I can figure out what it is lacking so I can determine what other chips I need.  I was looking for an example online.  I even went to the library today with no luck. (What was I thinking?)  That's actually why I came here in the first place.

The other possibility is the ESP8285 with embedded wifi, a little harder than the STM32L432  since no USB; people usually add a USB-to-UART transciever. Here (https://www.tindie.com/products/onehorse/esp8285-development-board/) equally small and as cute as the Ladybug (https://www.tindie.com/products/TleraCorp/ladybug-stm32l432-development-board/), both open source...

The STM32L432 is an easy may to get started. Open source, inexpensive, few external components, programmable over USB using Arduino IDE. This is the Ladybug development board, but you can make your own choices for layout, board area, power sector, etc. Might be best to conform the the Ladybug pin assignments until you get more experience.

Thanks. I'll look into it.

You can join retrobrew computers forum.  It is a group of hardware and software retro computer enthusiasts who build computers from ground up.

https://www.retrobrewcomputers.org/forum/index.php?t=thread&frm_id=1&

Thanks

Well, that's kinda the wrong way round. Typically you would start using a existing development board and at first build your device on top of that. If everything looks good you would create your own board with the components needed for your application.

For the most part, a lot of "Arduino" boards of various flavours are just breakout boards / simple dev boards for various microcontrollers. So I guess your first step would be to choose a microcontroller, and then design a PCB for it with pins that match the Arduino.

If Arduino supports that microcontroller, then congrats, you're done!

Otherwise you'll have to add support for the Arduino software to compile for that architecture.

The boards you mention are open-source.  Have a look at the schematics and software to figure out what "arduino-compatible" entails.  You can learn a lot from those designs.  Just to get you started:

https://www.pjrc.com/teensy/schematic.html

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