Slashdot Mirror

If ease of use is your concern, there's the Maple, which is basically an Arduino with a Cortex-M3 instead of an AVR: http://leaflabs.com/

I appreciate the fullness of the answer.

no problem.

What will it cost to do something with the dev module? At least through the network?

ok, one idea i'm advocating is to adapt arduino-like schematics to connect directly to the EOMA-PCMCIA-compliant interface. as such projects are usually a 2-layer board, very low-cost and the schematics are available under Open Source Licenses, it's a no-brainer. probably the best one to pick is the Leaflab's Maple: http://leaflabs.com/devices/maple/ because in mass-volume the CPU is around $1 to $1.50 (the 48-pin version not the 100-pin version!)

as this CPU is so low-cost, but importantly also so highly functional, its use substitutes and strategically "normalises" Motherboard designs. the plans being discussed at the moment include using the STM32F to do Audio (because of the D/A and A/D converters), battery monitoring (A/D converters), LCD Backlight control (PWM), resistive touchpanels (A/D converters again), keyboard matrix (8+8 GPIO) - someone's already written a mouse driver so at least that doesn't need to be done :)

so yes: if you're interested, look up the cost of arduino-like devices. at least for prototyping purposes you could just get an off-the-shelf leafpad maple and connect it directly to the EOMA-PCMCIA-compliant CPU card even with a few bits of wire, in a pinch.

anway, here's a link to some example motherboards that have been designed: http://elinux.org/Embedded_Open_Modular_Architecture/PCMCIA#Example_Motherboards
that includes a "micro" engineering board (that's nothing more complex than an adaptation of existing leafpad maple schematics) as well as something that's similar to the IMX53QSB, Beagleboard, Pandaboard and Origen etc.

Your price targets sound delightful. Might as well mark it up another $20 so you can fund the next version too. Or if the money could be spent on making it more rugged, that would be well-spent.

If the CPU is as fast as you say then there might be more interest in the dev module than you'd think.

yes, that's the plan :) would love to have some brainstorming ideas written by people on the possibilities, hmmm... let me just create a wiki page: http://rhombus-tech.net//community_ideas

I find C preferable for embedded work, but if you wanted to keep the same language interface as Arduino, you could simply use an appropriate library, such as this one: http://leaflabs.com/docs/libmaple.html

Yeah, this is much more like a Buglabs BUG or Leaf Labs Maple. It's also close to the price of the BeagleBoard, which is much more capable.

If you want the arduino-like version of the 72MHz 32-bit ARM check out the Maple

It is pretty much exactly that. With a few clever defines, you can actually write code that runs on both the maple and arduino.

From a quick glance through the maple docs the answer appears to be yes.

There are many little ARM boards, some of which are priced as low as $39 in quantity 1. These are useful for applications where the ATMega in an Arduno is too limiting.

The choice of peripherals these guys made is unusual. With a USB port and an HDMI port, you can build a game machine, which is probably what they had in mind. Most such boards are more suited to embedded applications, and have I/O - digital TTL ports, Ethernet, LCD drive, etc.

A problem with these minimal machines is deciding what to put on them. The lowest-price devices tend to have too little of some resource and too much of something you don't need. This leads to a proliferation of little embedded boards with slightly different options, which runs the cost back up.

For hobbyists, the Leaflands Maple may be interesting. It's an ARM board in the Arduno form factor. It's compatible with Arduno daughter boards ("shields"), and has some commonality with the Arduno development environment. Not enough memory to run Linux, though.

The $25 price is a vaporware price - they're not actually shipping. NXP is shipping LPCExpresso for "under $30", and that includes the entire tool chain (Eclipse, GCC, JTAG debugger, etc.)

Not sure what you mean by that.

I know

If by that you mean "It just works"

no

A recent project of mine. I opened the package with the arduino ( Another similarity with apple , they include cute stickers :-D ) Ripped apart a Wii Motion plus controler. Strapped the innards of the WPM and the arduino to a pair of aluminum towel bars. Added 4 brushless motors and propellers. And had myself a working qudro copter ( if you dont know what it is , think helicopter with 4 blades and no moving parts besides the props ).

Congratulations, you made a prebuild kit (if you did make it at all, pics or gtfo). No code written, no designing involved, no knowledge gained, replication with ready made building blocks.

If you are trying to continue the fallacy and say that they are "expensive" , then you are highly mistaken.

Its a fact, I already told you where to buy whole 90mips dev board with tft LCD cheaper than bare arduino you were so praising.
Hell, you can even buy arduino-like ARM boards cheaper than the board you mentioned
http://leaflabs.com/store/
90mips with arduino IDE.

There is NOTHING stopping you from downloding the source files for the board , and making your own. Not a thing at all.

AVRs are more expensive than anything else on the market, be it per mhz, per I/O, per KB, per unit, you name it.
Why would i want to make my own board for $16 chip that has a performance of $3 competition?

Perhaps you tried to use the word gaming as humor. Apple is not known for gaming.
  I know I only use them to play starcraft , perhaps some wow. OH and steam has a bunch of stuff that will run on mac.Oh dont let me forget my "onlive" account also.. To play call of duty , or something like that. I sit on my couch.

So you compare arduino to a laggy vaporware gaming platform, thank you for proving my point :)

( Oh .. and I was unable to locate this mystery board for $50 anyplace besides ebay

http://www.micro4you.com/store/mini-stm32-stm32f103-tft-lcd-board-v4/prod_164.html

.. And even there I had no idea what I was looking at.

No doubt about it.

There were Items with penny starting bids .. and items with $270 buy it now prices

Yes, numbers are confusing, especially with dollar sign in front, thats why Adruino is so popular :)

..Also .. Not sure about you , but I tend to buy things from people I can trust. Not having to take a risk on some ebay shop.. Google shopping search for "STM32 development board " returns items in the low 3 digit price ranges .. 250ish .. )

Yes, Arduino is great because you are unable to shop online. Great arguments my friend :)
There is a whole world of electronics out there, yet people threat Arduino as the only option.

The stuff from Leaf Labs is a bit light in the RAM department for full-blown linux; but gives you a 72MHz, 32bit ARM in either an arduino shield-compatible format or a native format that exploits more of the microprocessor's pinout. Fully open toolchain and documentation. Not bad for $50. They apparently also have a version with an FPGA.

If you want to run a full embedded-linux computer, you pretty much have to go one step further. NSLU2s are discontinued now; but should run you under $100 for an ARM board with full debian support. Gumstix is a bit pricier; but smaller and has the advantage of being in production. The various Marvell *plug devices are also pretty cool for the $100 range...

Summary is deceptive: They don't use an Arduino. They use their own ARM Maple board: http://leaflabs.com/ which was designed to the Arduino form factor.

These lights lit up our burning man camp :)

From TFA: they also provide firmware for the ARM Cortex M3 with the LeafLabs Maple. Nice job reading! Presumably they went with Arduino because it's the most popular thing out there. Duh.

If you read TFA, you would see that for advanced users they have ARM Cortex M3 support via the LeafLabs Maple

In the grand scheme of tech-elitism, ARM >> AVR. :P

Presumably they use Arduino because it is so popular, they want tinkerers to join them in building their software, right?