OneAgain - Which Development Board to Chose?

If i knew hoe to correct the typo in the heading i would.

*Once again

In article , Hamish writes

What do you want to do? that always helps. Got any projects in mind.

Why LCD screen? This adds to cost and complexity a LOT also you will go over the limits on most of the commercial eval compilers unless it is a simple dot matrix. Try a serial OP to a terminal window on you PC.

try:- Olimex IAR }these are more than 80USD but have the JTAG debugger as well Keil}

BTW you don't want to go too cheap. Get a reasonable USB JTAG debuuger not a parallel one. IT is worth it in the end.

BTW F0r simple projects you can usually do it in the eval versions of the commercial compilers so you can use the same compilers as in the collage, assuming they use commercial compilers.

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In article , Chris Hills writes

It should have formatted as a list.

There are others but IAR and Keil do a lot of Philips boards. Olimex to a wider range and are not expensive.

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\/\/\/\/\ Chris Hills  Staffs  England     /\/\/\/\/
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If you want to build your own for a rock-bottom price, I've provided a design using the LPC2106 (including Gerber and drill files) in the Files section of the LPC2000 Yahoo group. The PCB will cost about $40 to have made, and the parts will add another $30 or so. It doesn't have a JTAG connector, but it is quite easy to add one. It will boot from a PC via UART0.

Leon

Hamish schrieb:

Ok, but it's definitely not the easiest MCU for a beginner. If you want to start small, take a look at the Atmel AVRs, they are much easier to understand.

There are good free C compilers for both AVR and ARM.

I would recommend one of the Olimex boards with LPC2xxx or AT91SAM7S, they are quite popular so you will find a lot of help. You can buy them directly from Olimex or on my website

Quite frankly, I haven't seen a deal this good in a while:

I have ordered two of them to play with, and it has everything you are looking for (ARM7, COLOR LCD, buttons, plus Bluetooth!). All for 35 euros...pretty amazing!

I'm not affilitated with Embedded Artists, nor have I actually received my boards yet (they start delivery in less than two weeks), but I think this is definitely worth a look.

Regards, John O

THanks for that. I have been looking and seem to find a lot of references for the LPC-MT-2106. I really have no idea how I will make a decision.

I dont have any projets at the moment I will run through some tutorials and see how I go. I just want somewhere to start.

decision.

If it's any help, the AT91SAM7S has USB2 support.

Hamish,

There are a lot of choices - you should consider targets for which you can get free tools that you can use for awhile until you target a specific architecture and processor - for this reason - I'd recommend the TI MSP430. You can download eval tools both from TI and IAR (and others) - that will let you build limited (4KB and 8KB, respectively) applications.

The board from Elprotronic is one I'd recommend - they give a discount for students too - please take a look at:

- you can get it with the '1611 too.

I'd also take a look at

- and the products from MoteIV:

You can buy a 'mote' from MoteIV and use the development tools for free - MoteIV has their own branch now to the TinyOS tree.

Just some suggestions. If you want to be low-cost - then PIC and other 8-bit micros may be something to look at as well.

HTH, John W.

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I had a look at this board. I can't see that it has any input or output pins. Is it just for game development or can it be adapted later for other uses, i.e. digital light dimming.

They do other boards for that sort of application.

Leon

"Hamish" skrev i meddelandet news: snipped-for-privacy@35g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...

The new AVR Dragon could be a good choice. Not ARM based but has built in JTAG emulator for an AVR.

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Best Regards,
Ulf Samuelsson
This is intended to be my personal opinion which may,
or may not be shared by my employer Atmel Nordic AB

As an EE student you should be able to make your own. Get an AVR ATMega32 (40 PIN DIL), the AVR Studio Software, and WinAVR GCC. An ISP programming tool is really easy to build for parallel or serial port - see Ponyprog for example.

The ATMega AVR controllers are easy to use. Just apply +5v and Ground and the chip should start running with the internal oscillator (watch out for correct fuse bits!).

The controller is 3.50¤ at

40¤ should be enough for the beginning, and you'll learn something about hardware.

If you are familar with the AVR controllers you can make the next step with more advanced (and difficult) controllers.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen

Frank-Christian Krügel

In the good old days this was a good idea. However these days it makes sense to buy a ready made board.

There are plenty of low cost boards out there for most MCU.

[commercial snipped]

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\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
\/\/\/\/\ Chris Hills  Staffs  England     /\/\/\/\/
/\/\/ chris@phaedsys.org      www.phaedsys.org \/\/\
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