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ARM Processor On a Breadboard (hackaday.com)

Posted by Soulskill on from the ARMing-the-competition dept.

An anonymous reader writes: A normal Arduino is easy to use and cheap, but it is a reasonably slow 8-bit processor with limited memory. Why do people use them? They are simple to use and set up. Hackaday shows how to take a cheap ($6) 32-bit CPU in a breadboard-friendly package, plug in a small number of parts (resistors, LEDs, and a cable), and use an online Arduino-like IDE to program it. The chip is way more powerful than an 8-bit Arduino and the code is comparable in complexity to an Arduino sketch that does the same thing. It's an easy way to get into embedded without having to suffer through 8-bit processors. And the new Arduinos also use 32-bit ARM, so that's an option too.

3 of 94 comments (clear)

  1. Teensy 3.1 by suso · · Score: 5, Informative

    Or you just buy a Teensy 3.1 for around $20. Its a 32-bit ARM running at 72 MHz and runs Arduino code.

    1. Re:Teensy 3.1 by geoskd · · Score: 4, Informative

      and greybeards/hams tend to use obsolete hardware and chant "right tool for the job" because they refuse to learn new things. same guys show up for an interview and wonder why they don't get hired.

      Us greybeards would be impressed with these things if there was anything to be impressed about. This thing is far too little far too late. for $10, you can get one of these.

      You young uns don't even understand enough to know what to get excited about...

      --
      I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
  2. Re:Power usage? by subreality · · Score: 4, Informative

    My Arduino projects don't require the power of a 32-bit processor, but do run on batteries. How much more (... or less maybe?) power is drawn by this processor?

    It's reasonably close. If you check the datasheets for "Static Characteristics" / "DC Characteristics" you'll find:

    The LPC1114FN28 (the ARM chip) draws 9ma @50 MHz, 6ua @deep-sleep, and 220na @power-down;
    The ATMEGA168PA (typical Arduino-ish AVR) draws 4.2ma @8MHz, 0.8ua @power-save, and 0.1ua @power-down.

    These numbers are just for the chips - the Arduino draws considerably more (about 40ma @idle), and you can stretch your batteries a lot by hacking it. To give a sense of scale, the power LED on an Arduino probably draws 5-10 ma just by itself.

    Note that this is a "Cortex M0" profile ARM chip - M means Microcontroller, and 0 means low-end. This is a 50 MHz chip with 32K of flash and 4K of RAM. It's more powerful than an AVR, but don't expect to boot Linux on your breadboard with this thing... that's a job for the Cortex A (Application) series.

    Source:
    http://www.nxp.com/documents/d...
    http://www.atmel.com/images/At...