Join us next Thursday, the at 11 am Eastern time (4pm GMT) for our next chat "One ARM to Rule Them All." As more and more MCU companies expand their ARM offerings, will it become the dominant architecture? The advantge for developers is that one tool set and knowledge base can cover a wide variety of different devices, simplifying development. But in diversity there is also greater opportunity. So, will ARM come to dominate, and if so, will that be a good thing or a bad one?
Join us here to give us your view of ARM's expansion and debate the pros and cons of the One Architecture.
mares.vit makes a good point below. With these eval boards being subsidized (we suspect) it makes development and prototyping systems look expensive by comparison. But having these boards be available for free or low cost does encourage folks to take a look at a new MCU that goes beyond simply reading data sheets.
Do folks find that the things they discover (good and bad) when using the eval or dev kits hold true when they use the base MCU in their full-featured design? Or are these boards creating unnecessary difficulty or glossing over some significant challenges?
We might want to separate out development boards from evaluation boards. We could think of eval boards as being very limited function and flexibility that you power up and run a few simple tests on, then put in a drawer and forget. Dev boards should be more flexible with more I/O brought out, with better support so one can actually get some code segments running on them for more detailed test and experiment.
Pricing seems to suggest that these low-cost boards are being subsidized by the company because they have marketing value. Would you like to see some kind of standard (or typical) pinout or feature set on these boards to help with making direct comparisons by re-using the support circuits you need to build?
One of the problems I see with some of these boards is that they are designed to highlight a specific feature of the MCU and sometimes for specific industries. The less general the board is, the more difficult to use it for more than cursory evaluation. Do other folks find that to be true?
I have heard comments in other forums about how some of these boards are not very helpful for development because of restricted debugging capability. Anyone agree?
The problem arises when the experimenter compares prices of eval-boards which are aided and funded by chip manufacturer with prices of other development kits. He quite often thinks: Why are they so expensive?
"Just Toys" - you make that sound like a bad thing! I am sure most of us cut our teeth on projects that many would consider just toys. For me is it that boy-like wonder when I see my creation spring into life that spurs me on. The day I stop feeling like a boy in short pants when my gadget works (or even does something) is the day I stop making things!
Thursday, Dec. 6, 11am EST – Low-Cost Dev Boards: Just Toys? – There has been a tremendous outpouring of ultra-low cost development boards from MCU vendors in the last year or so. The cost is so low, one wonders if the vendors lose money on each one. But they sure are appealing for hobbyists and experimenters, students and entrepreneurs with limited budgets. But are they something that you can really use as a commercial developer? Would you create a real, for-market product using one of these boards, or perhaps a functional prototype? Or are they just to play with and "kick the tires" on an MCU? Tell us your thoughts and experiences.
To save this item to your list of favorite Microcontroller Central content so you can find it later in your Profile page, click the "Save It" button next to the item.
If you found this interesting or useful, please use the links to the services below to share it with other readers. You will need a free account with each service to share an item via that service.
Tweet This
