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A 32-bit Development System For $2
An anonymous reader writes "If you are too cheap to buy a $20 Arduino or too elitist to not have at least a 32-bit processor, Dr. Dobb's shows you how to take a $2 chip, put it on a breadboard with a TTL serial (or USB) cable, and be up and running with a 32-bit C/C++ system. Even if you have to buy the breadboard and the cable, it is comparable in price to an Arduino and much more capable. The Mbed libraries (optional) make it as easy to use a 'duino, too."
I'll betcha I can 3D print the same CPU for 1.50$ It's the future!
So you can take a $2 microcontroller, put it on your $10 breadbord, power it with your $100 variable power supply, wire it up with your $5 eBay chi.com wires, and talk to it with your $12 FTDI adapter. SO WHAT? This isn't news. This is what ARM developers have been doing since the damn chips came out.
You've got it! There are numerous tiny 32-bit ARM Cortex-M3 based boards out there for less than $20, which are virtually always more practical. It's not like you can't use them with a breadboard for prototyping. Teensy version 3.0 comes to mind.
Digi-Key $3.48 and Mouser $3.49
Still could be something you can have a lot of fun with!
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
If you are going to go with an individual chip to be put on a breadboard or a breakout board, there have been a wide variety of chips in the $2-5 range for years. And like every other step of the price ladder, there are newer, better ones each year. The chips on a lot of the dev boards, even some $100+ ones are quite cheap. What you are paying for is the convenience of someone setting up a communication layer for you and having it all soldered together in a compact design. If you are trying to save money, you always have the option of using the chip directly, although some faster, smaller ones might be more difficult to setup depending on your soldering and PCB making skills. Although some of the cheap dev boards come out to about the same cost as buying a USB communication chip and socket anyway because they are selling at a loss or using volume discounts, so it is difficult to get the exact same prices of less. But if you already have a USB to TTL cable of some sorts, you just need the main processor chip in a lot of cases. Then it is about making sure you can initially program the chip, and it is useful to have good instructions (like this article) or tutorial instead of working that out from the datasheet.
I used to love Dr Dobbs. But unfortunately had to give up my expensive Dr Dobb's habit, when it went online-only, and turned into a cheesy website peddling little but warmed-over stuff from elsewhere, and paid puffery. Too bad.
Here's a better one-chip sollution:
MicroMite.
PIC32 running a full BASIC interperter (ANSI X3.113-1987, with optional line numbers, structured programming features like do loops, multiline if statements, user defined subroutines and functions. )
You don't even need to install Arduino or another IDE to use-it - you just need a VT100 terminal emulator and use the built-in editor.
1% APY, No fees, Online Bank https://captl1.co/2uIErYq Don't let your $$$ sit in a no-interest acct.
Digi-Key $3.48 and Mouser $3.49
Digikey and Mouser are about the most expensive places to go. They have everything and usually don't have minimum buys but the markups are huge. Arrow Electronics has them for $1.70. My company buys a lot of stuff through Heilind.
If you want to find out who has parts and how much, stocknet is a good resource.
... can anyone elaborate as to why this would be a better road than just springing for a Raspberry Pi?
I dig that the chip in TFA is DIP...but soldering TQFP isn't that tough... same cost, much more power in the Teensy 3.1. Also less of a hack than what's described in the article.
look forward to buying one, playing with it for a day, then throwing it in a drawer, never to be seen until I move.
I can do it for $0.
My PC support 32 bit instructions.
Huh? Have you actually looked at it in the last few years?
This quarter, Walter Bright on writing languages, Dave Thomas (the Ruby guy) on why he regrets being one of the original signers of the the Agile Manifesto, Cay Horstmann's lengthy tutorial on Java 8 lambdas, Microsoft's compiler team on the most underused compiler switches for Visual C++. In addition, Jolt Awards, salary survey, and editorials that aren't shy, like this week's on companies using OSS without buying licenses. I read and love Dr. Dobb's and don't in anyway recognize what you're talking about.
... can anyone elaborate as to why this would be a better road than just springing for a Raspberry Pi?
I have some old systems in the closet running as headless Linux boxes. I recently realized some of those were about the same CPU and RAM -wise as a Raspberry Pi B I had on my desk for a current project. The Pi was about US$45 with case and power. I'm thinking of attaching an external USB HD and mounting a NAS HD for some comparison test to these old systems. Don't need blazing performance for the local subversion or media wiki server in the closet, might save space and watts and decibels with the Pi. Should be a fun experiment.
The cheapest breadboard I could find was $30.
In other news, I also figured out how to get a great ride for $1. All you need to do is add a $1 car freshener to your existing BMW.
Spending a little more money up front often pays off with a better product, bigger user community, more sample code, more documentation... and no breadboarding!
If you sign up with Microchip as a dev, they'll send you small numbers of their chips for free. These can be set up to work with next to zero external components. You will need some kind of programmer though.
32 bits x (dollar / 8 bits) = 4 dollar
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Even the website says $3 for the chip. It's £1.50 from avnet. Extremely optimistic summary. To quote TFA...
Assuming you already have a breadboard and a few simple items, you can start using these CPUs with very little effort. Even if you have to buy everything, you could spend as little as $20 — perhaps $40 if you buy the Link board for debugging. The result, though, is an easy to work with 32-bit development system that can create systems that are very inexpensive to deploy.
Perhaps a zero slipped? You need to buy the carrier PCB (probably $3-5 from Oshpark), breadboard ($1-2 on eBay), wires and a USB-Serial cable. I don't know anyone who just has a serial converter just lying around unless they're an engineer - nobody except electrical engineers and instrument scientists use serial ports any more.
http://octopart.com/partsearch#!?q=LPC1114FN28
LOL.
Thanx for the tip.
I think I'll buy a Corvette that way.
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
$2 is only 16 bits, since a quarter is 2 bits...
Assuming you already have a breadboard and a few simple items, you can start using these CPUs with very little effort. Even if you have to buy everything, you could spend as little as $20 — perhaps $40 if you buy the Link board for debugging.
An arduino has many more connectors and is easier to use and therefore justifies a higher cost.
Wow, that makes me want to subscribe.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
One Microcontroller Per Child. At $2 a pop they could give one to every kid in the world.
"I don't know anyone who just has a serial converter just lying around unless they're an engineer"
This is not a first project for anybody. Chances are high that you've already played with Arduino a fair bit, and built your own on breadboard as well. In which case you most likely have a USB-serial cable or board already, in order to program them.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Neat!. like 8b days with 32. some old ARM BBC BASIC interpreter and push code trough serial line?
Absolutely. I'm certainly not dissing the Arduino and I'm starting to play with some Raspberry Pi stuff myself.
As you say, programming PICs can be done on the cheap but even their ICD stuff was not that expensive (I'm currently using the rip-off Inchworm at home though).
I think he was dissing MPLab and similar, not GCC.
I've used GCC a fair bit and they get quite a lot of kudos from me. I'm not religious about it though.
This is exactly what I do with with an Olimex PIC32 T-795H. It breaks the PIC32 IO out to breadboard compatible pins, and comes with an open source version of MMBASIC installed. It is easy to upgrade it to one of the later closed versions of MMBASIC that is more VB-like, and has better performance. Performance is not too bad, it processes about 1 BASIC token per microsecond. MMBASIC even supports treating the unused portion (192K) of FLASH as a file system, and can do autostart to a BASIC app, and it supports app chaining. You can literally plug this thing into a breadboard, plug it into a usb port, open a VT100 terminal and start writing code. On a Mac, you can use screen, but you'll need to modify the function key mappings to get the VT100 function keys the MMBASIC editor supports to work correctly. 32 bit 80MHz BASIC machine that is ready to rock.
Nice.... That way you can push external "live code" to the controller. I guess the speed issue can be optimized at parts needed if your BASIC interpreter allows assembly embbeding. Given this thing. Ideal programming machine would be a Raspberry Pi. :-) Vt100 compatible. And cheaper than Apple Machines.
On Raspberry Pi do love Real Time Basic-Assembler integration of RISCOS Operative System, that is a very efficent colaborative multitasking ARM ASM + BASIC environment for the ARM Systems, back from the Archimedes Days. I Was thinking that something similar to RISCOS but suited for ARM microcontrolers instead full SOC complete systems as PI, would be so neat.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...
RPi is an excellent machine, but the GPIO cannot handle realtime apps. What it really needs is a realtime I/O controller. Maybe something like an XMOS controller and an FPGA.