PIC Microcontrollers

[ABearden]

You have direct pin control, how much lower are you wanting? Toss the Arduino libraries and build your own?

You can actually get an ATMega chip w/o the Arduino hardware for roughly the same price range as a PIC, like many microcontrollers. If you want, you can use some versions of the Arduino to program the chip then move it to a breadboard (the Uno is socket mounted instead of surface mount).