I'm doing a little demo application for an upcoming control systems class, and I need a processor board to go with it. Unfortunately there's a gazzilion different vendors out there, and I'm rather overwhelmed by choices.
So if any of you have gone through this exercise in the recent past, could you share your results? I'm willing to entertain both chip manufacturer's eval boards and 3rd-party single board computers.
I'd like to use either a TMS430 part (because it seems to be up-and-coming), or some ARM-based part (because if I'm going to learn one new processor it should be ARM). I think TI has me covered with TMS430 boards, should I go that route.
For an ARM board, I'm looking at something that has:
- A serial port for talking to a host
- At least one analog input for reading feedback. This (these) would preferably be at least 10 bit sampling ADCs who's sampling can be controlled by a hardware timer.
- At least one PWM output for drive.
- Some provisions for debugging; an eval board with built in JTAG would be the bees knees, but a second serial port that could be used with GDB would be acceptable.
Comments & suggestions are welcome.