Best dev kits for ARM Cortex?

Hi

I've started porting a project from an 8 bit AVR to an ARM Cortex M3 MCU. I'm reasonably comfy with AVR, but I'm new to ARM Cortex.

I found an NXP part that looked great, price and feature wise. I purchased an inexpensive LPCXpresso dev kit. However, the drivers and example code is simply awful. Buggy and poorly written, so development is more like reverse engineering than making actual progress. I should be coding the "business logic" by now, but I'm still fiddling with setup. There is nothing "xpresso" about developing on this kit. Maybe it refers to the amount of coffee you have to drink, I'm putting in a lot of long nights here.

I can find suitable parts for this project from Luminary/TI, ST, NXP or Atmel so I'm not locked into any vendor in particular.

I was hoping someone could offer an advice on which manufacturer provide the best dev kits? With well documented, well commented example code and drivers? Cost is not an issue (within reason).

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Reply to
mhjerde
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How about you start by saying what you want to get from the kit? It would be no good somebody recommending a kit for a USB part, if you were interested in Ethernet.

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Regards, Richard.

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Reply to
FreeRTOS info

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How about you start by saying what you want to get from the kit? It would be no good somebody recommending a kit for a USB part, if you were interested in Ethernet.

--=20

Regards, Richard.

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Reply to
FreeRTOS info

I was thinking more in terms of how manufacturers compare in quality of example code and drivers, in general.

As long as the prices for the parts are similar, it makes sense to use the manufacturer that provides the best docs and tools. I've looked at Luminary (StellarisWare) and it certainly looks a lot better that what NXP provides.

This particular project isn't particularly complex, but it exercises a number of peripherals; it has a TFT LCD display, a bunch of HMI controls, i2C connected sensors, an ADC input, 4 channel PWM machinery and a USB port for firmware updates.

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Reply to
mhjerde

I've done Cortex-M3 bring up on STM32, NXP LPC17xx, and Luminary/TI LM3S9B92. We've also done a ton of ARM7s and other CPUs. With dev kits, you get what you pay for. In general we always find the Keil kits to be good.

If you are going to do a lot of development, the key issue is the tool chain. If you must use C, Rowley are good especially on tech support.

If you use the NXP parts, you can use the serial boot loader with FlashMagic and will not need a JTAG unit. For others, you'll need a JTAG unit. Beware some of the cheap ones, they have truly dreadful USB drivers. If you want to use a debugger, you will *need* a JTAG unit.

Stephen

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Stephen Pelc, stephenXXX@mpeforth.com
MicroProcessor Engineering Ltd - More Real, Less Time
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Reply to
Stephen Pelc

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ry

I have done the Luminary. It is still not perfect. Unless you paid for professional tool chains (>$1000), you still need lots of work.

rt

I always fall back to AVR if it can handle it, and seems like it could in your case. Despite the problem discussed in another thread, WinAVR is still the best.

Reply to
linnix

Thanks for the suggestions!

I'm looking into STM32 and Stellaris as these seems to be supported with much higher quality drivers and example code.

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mhjerde

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Have you considered PIC32 (though it is MIPS, not ARM) ? Decent dev kits and tools from Microchip... Hope that helps, Best Regards, Dave

Reply to
Dave Nadler

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