Friday, December 25, 2009

New ARM Microcontroller boards

I have found out about some new ARM microcontroller boards:

Mbed - founded by ARM folks, an LPC1768 ARM Cortex-M3 based board. The "special sauce" is that the board looks like a USB drive that you drop your programs onto, as well as providing a web-based development environment, making it more cross-platform and usable even with "locked-down" computers. It comes in a "STAMP-like" 40-pin 0.1" pitch DIP form-factor. C++ programming with many peripheral API libraries. It has 10/100 Ethernet MAC and an IP stack, but you need to add an Ethernet jack (like the MagJack SI-60002-F, which is ~$5). A 100 MHz ARM with 64 KB of SRAM, 512 KB of Flash. It looks like 25 GPIOs pins that can also be 6x12-bit A/D, one 10-bit D/A, 6xPWM out, 2x I2C, 2x CAN, 2x SPI, 3xSerial ports. 4.5v-9.0v input, 3.3v and 5.0v regulated outputs. Pre-order price is $60. Supposedly final MSRP is $99. I think $60 is more reasonable, because at $99 you have to ask yourself why not go Make Controller kit at $120 and have all the motor drivers.

ET-STM32 Stamp Module - ARM Cortex M3 processor in "STAMP" form-factor with 512K flash, 64K RAM. Has 48 GPIO ports including 16x12-bit A/D, 2xD/A, 5 USARTs, CAN, I2C, USB (but no USB connector), needs 3.3VDC, $24.90.

LeafLabs Maple - Another ARM Cortex M3 board in an Arduino form-factor. 128K flash, 20K RAM, 39 digital input/output pins, 16 analog inputs, USB, 3 USARTs, SPI/I2C, 3-18VDC input. Uses an open-source, Arduino like sketch programming interface. $39.99, but sold out right now.






1 comment:

Larry_P said...

Tom,

I have the latter two (I just got the Maple running the Arduino Blink sketch last night.) I've been hoping that Olimex would do a board based on the LPC17xx chips, but so far no luck.

-- Larry
ursine @t gm4il d0t c0m