more little development boards

[Paul Rubin]

These use the Atmel Atmega32u4, an 8-bit micro with 32k flash, 2k ram,
1k EEPROM, 2 cycle 8x8->16 multiplier, a/d-d/a, gpio's, etc. An
interesting feature is a USB client port built directly into the chip.
It runs at 16 mhz and as such is probably a bit slower than an MSP430
and it costs more too, but there are some nice small relatively cheap
boards:

Teensy/Teensy++ - very tiny boards, in 24 and 40 pin DIP form factors
(the 40 pin one has more exposed i/o lines):

http://pjrc.com/teensy/index.html

Adafruit breakout board: similar to above, but a little bit bigger,
with mounting holes etc.:

http://www.adafruit.com/products/296

Finally, this is interesting, a dev board in a USB pen drive form
factor, including a microsd slot, so you can make your own flash stick
with special purpose code (I'm thinking cryptographic authentication
token):

http://www.easymg.com/avr-micro-sd-development-board-atmega32u4.html
http://www.diygadget.com/avr-micro-sd-development-board-atmega32u4.html

Schematics and further info are here:

http://www.tiaowiki.com/w/TIAO_AVR_/_Micro_SD_Development_Board_%28ATMEGA32U4%29

[Paul Rubin]

Paul Rubin <no.e...@nospam.invalid> writes:
> These use the Atmel Atmega32u4, an 8-bit micro with 32k flash, 2k ram,

> 1k EEPROM, ...
> Teensy/Teensy++ - very tiny boards... (the 40 pin one has more
> exposed i/o lines):

Woops, actually the bigger one has a different cpu with a lot more
memory: 128k program flash, 8k ram, and 4k eeprom. And the smaller one
has 2.5k of ram rather than 2k, if anyone cares. Power requirements are
not specified. And I'm not sure what to do with 128k of program flash
on an 8 bitter ;-).

[Elizabeth D. Rather]

Data storage. The first devices that we programmed for FedEx back in the
day had a 6809 and a whole lot of memory. The application ran in 48K,
with 16K reserved for paging data.

Of course, if it weren't programmed in Forth, that program wouldn't have
fit in the 48K :-)

Cheers,
Elizabeth

--
==================================================
Elizabeth D. Rather (US & Canada) 800-55-FORTH
FORTH Inc. +1 310.999.6784
5959 West Century Blvd. Suite 700
Los Angeles, CA 90045
http://www.forth.com

"Forth-based products and Services for real-time
applications since 1973."
==================================================

[Paul Rubin]

"Elizabeth D. Rather" <era...@forth.com> writes:
>>And I'm not sure what to do with 128k of program flash on an 8 bitter ;-).
> Data storage. The first devices that we programmed for FedEx back in
> the day had a 6809 and a whole lot of memory. The application ran in
> 48K, with 16K reserved for paging data.

Yeah, it's truly insane the amount of data storage that can be put into
a tiny thing these days. The USB stick gadget has a microsd slot that
may be able to use a microsdxc card:

http://www.adorama.com/IDSMUMSD64G.html

this is just mind boggling to me. But, I don't think the micro can run
code from the card, at least at full speed. I'm assuming it can run
from the on-chip flash with no slowdown. I suppose it could load code
in from the external card and run it from ram. I just think I start
wanting a 32 bit cpu once we're at that level.

[Albert van der Horst]

In article <7xipf9z...@ruckus.brouhaha.com>,

I do. ciforth on the Renesas has ram image in flash, copied from
there on startup.
It has a spare ram image. If it exists, that is the image to run
on reset. 256 of the flash contains blocks with a library.
Other flash contains several applications.
A typical turnkey system can be had by loading an application,
using the library, and putting it in the spare image.

This puts a typical 1 Mbyte of flash to good use.

A large application can run typical Forth style, by loading the
block that are needed only.

(Beats loading the blocks from cassette tape any time ;-) )

Groetjes Albert



--
--
Albert van der Horst, UTRECHT,THE NETHERLANDS
Economic growth -- being exponential -- ultimately falters.
albert@spe&ar&c.xs4all.nl &=n http://home.hccnet.nl/a.w.m.van.der.horst

[Paul Rubin]

Albert van der Horst <alb...@spenarnc.xs4all.nl> writes:
> I do. ciforth on the Renesas has ram image in flash, copied from

> there on startup....
> A typical turnkey system can be had by loading an application,...

> This puts a typical 1 Mbyte of flash to good use.

OK, this sounds like a general purpose system on which you can write new
applications from scratch. Do you find it useful?

I have to say, the type of usage I had in mind would have the Forth
including just enough stuff for the specific embedded application. I'm
imagining certain types of gadgets that the user might like to configure
or customize. One way is with some kind of PC interface, but more
Forth-ish is to put a text interpreter directly in the gadget.

[Mark Wills]

MPE have a gorgeous board on their site:

http://www.mpeforth.com/pb2468.htm

It's not cheap, but there again, it's a full on board with bags of IO,
and... Well, I'll just post the spec:

•RS232 Serial - 10 pin IDC header - industry standard pin-out
•Ethernet - connector with blinkenlights
•SD card - micro SD
•USB device - plugs into any PC
•USB - device (option)
•Flexible power options
◦From USB device connector
◦From edge-connector 5v
◦From 9-24 AC/DC jack
•2 64 pin GPIO connectors on two-rows at .1" pitch

•72MHz ARM7
•512k on-chip Flash
•64+16+16kb single-cycle on-chip SRAM
•2 kb RAM with battery backup facility
•16Mb external SRAM
•JTAG debug connector
•DMA engine
•RTC and 32KHz crystal
•Ethernet
•USB host and device
•4 UARTs
•2 channel CAN controller
•2 SSP controllers for SPI, SSI and Microwire
•3 I2C interfaces
•I2S interface
•SD/MMC 4 pin mode
•8 channel 10 bit ADC
•10 bit DAC
•4 General purpose timers with 8 capture inputs and 10 compare
outputs.
•Watchdog
•160 configurable I/O pins

Utterly awesome. Pretty much fits the bill exactly for the stuff that
I would want to do (fairly high power SCADA RTUs running MODBUS RTU,
CAN, Profibus and potentially (with TCP/IP) OPC-DA).

VFX can be targeted to the board, so with VFX you can have a full
featured, multi-tasking embedded system with TCP/IP, USB, CANbus, SD
card, the whole shebang, with no underlying operating system. It's
just Forth.

I got my eyes on one of these. I've pretty much resolved to order VFX
and one of these boards. Just got to set some funds aside, as VFX is
quite an investment (though, that's *exactly* what it is, an
*investment*. I have no issue with investing in professional-grade
development tools for serious, (potentially money making) projects.)

Here's the link to the MPE page with the board:

http://www.mpeforth.com/pb2468.htm

Happy Jubilee!

[jonphilpott]

I'm a fan of this one:

http://www.arrownac.com/solutions/bemicro-sdk/

- Altera Cylone IV FPGA w/22K LE
- 10/100 Ethernet PHY
- Edge connector with protoboard and robot-base available.
- Micro SD card slot
- Built-in USB-Blaster

Could easily run one of the many Forth CPUs on this FPGA, with plenty of room to boot (pun intended)

Jon.

[quiet_lad]

On Jun 2, 2:27 pm, Paul Rubin <no.em...@nospam.invalid> wrote:
> These use the Atmel Atmega32u4, an 8-bit micro with 32k flash, 2k ram,
> 1k EEPROM, 2 cycle 8x8->16 multiplier, a/d-d/a, gpio's, etc.  An
> interesting feature is a USB client port built directly into the chip.
> It runs at 16 mhz and as such is probably a bit slower than an MSP430
> and it costs more too, but there are some nice small relatively cheap
> boards:
>
> Teensy/Teensy++ - very tiny boards, in 24 and 40 pin DIP form factors
> (the 40 pin one has more exposed i/o lines):
>
>    http://pjrc.com/teensy/index.html
>
> Adafruit breakout board: similar to above, but a little bit bigger,
> with mounting holes etc.:
>
>    http://www.adafruit.com/products/296
>
> Finally, this is interesting, a dev board in a USB pen drive form
> factor, including a microsd slot, so you can make your own flash stick
> with special purpose code (I'm thinking cryptographic authentication
> token):
>

> http://www.easymg.com/avr-micro-sd-development-board-atmega32u4.htmlhttp://www.diygadget.com/avr-micro-sd-development-board-atmega32u4.html

>
> Schematics and further info are here:
>

> http://www.tiaowiki.com/w/TIAO_AVR_/_Micro_SD_Development_Board_%28AT...

What can you do with these? Curious....

[Paul Rubin]

jonphilpott <jon.ph...@gmail.com> writes:
> I'm a fan of this one:
> http://www.arrownac.com/solutions/bemicro-sdk/

> - Altera Cylone IV FPGA w/22K LE ...

> Could easily run one of the many Forth CPUs on this FPGA

I'm pretty interested in this type of product since I'd like to know
something about FPGA programming, but it doesn't fall into the category
of small, cheap, low powered boards that I had in mind in starting this
thread. Also I would think the idea of an FPGA is to use the
parallelism of all those gates inside, rather than making an inefficient
softcore cpu. The purpose of a softcore (I'd think) is just to sequence
other stuff going on inside the fpga. For that purpose, a Forth cpu is
probably smaller and more efficient than a conventional softcore.

[BruceMcF]

On Jun 8, 11:38 pm, Paul Rubin <no.em...@nospam.invalid> wrote:
> Also I would think the idea of an FPGA is to use the
> parallelism of all those gates inside, rather than making an inefficient
> softcore cpu.

That's one idea ~ effectively multiple chips specialized to the task
at hand, and if the design does not use all of those gates, with the
virtual board design extendible in the field.

> The purpose of a softcore (I'd think) is just to sequence other stuff going
> on inside the fpga.

One purpose, certainly. An alternative purpose is for the other stuff
to provide the hardware support for the things that it would be
inefficient for the softcore itself to perform.

> For that purpose, a Forth cpu is probably smaller and more efficient
> than a conventional softcore.

Efficiency with respect to what? Gate efficiency, surely.

[Paul Rubin]

This looks interesting:

http://www.element14.com/community/docs/DOC-46626

"element14 exclusive Kinetis L-based Freescale Freedom Development
Board"

Summary: it's an Arduino-sized board with Arduino connectors, but with
an ARM Cortex M0+ processor (runs up to 48 mhz), 16K SRAM, 128K program
flash, USB port, usual GPIO's, adc/dac's and stuff, and a $12.95 USD
price tag. It can apparently be powered by a coin cell, and the Cortex
M0+ claims to have 2x the power efficiency of the closest 8/16 bit
competitor (whatever that is: MSP430?).

Seems like a nice bridge between the too-limited Arduino and Launchpad
boards with just a few hundred bytes of ram, and the more expensive and
power hungry Linux-based boards such as the Raspberry Pi.

Right now it's still in preorder, no ship date specified as far as I can
tell, but I'm planning to keep an eye on it.

[Stephen Pelc]

On Sat, 21 Jul 2012 01:47:48 -0700, Paul Rubin
<no.e...@nospam.invalid> wrote:

>"element14 exclusive Kinetis L-based Freescale Freedom Development
>Board"

Also do not forget the STM32 Discovery boards, which cover the M0, M3
and M4 families at around the $12 to $14 region. They are readily
available on this side of the pond. The STM32F4 Discovery board is a
"stonking" piece of kit ... and it's supported by the Stamp version
of the MPE cross compiler.

>Seems like a nice bridge between the too-limited Arduino and Launchpad
>boards with just a few hundred bytes of ram, and the more expensive and
>power hungry Linux-based boards such as the Raspberry Pi.

There are a few ARM Cortex boards in Arduino format, but not in the
$30 price bracket. The SolderCore board is available from Mouser.

Stephen

--
Stephen Pelc, steph...@mpeforth.com
MicroProcessor Engineering Ltd - More Real, Less Time
133 Hill Lane, Southampton SO15 5AF, England
tel: +44 (0)23 8063 1441, fax: +44 (0)23 8033 9691
web: http://www.mpeforth.com - free VFX Forth downloads

[Paul Rubin]

steph...@mpeforth.com (Stephen Pelc) writes:
> Also do not forget the STM32 Discovery boards,...

I remember having trouble finding info on those, but I'll keep them in mind.

> There are a few ARM Cortex boards in Arduino format, but not in the
> $30 price bracket. The SolderCore board is available from Mouser.

The Arduino format doesn't do particularly much for me, though I can see
why it might interest some users. I'd be more interested in something
like the Teensy:

https://www.adafruit.com/products/199
https://www.adafruit.com/products/731

but with an ARM. I guess the Gumstix is sort of like that, though
considerably more expensive and power hungry.

[jacko]

The eZ430-chronos msp430 sub 1Ghz TX/RX, 32K flash, 4K RAM is my current favourite. Using gcc though.

[van...@vsta.org]

Paul Rubin <no.e...@nospam.invalid> wrote:
> ... I guess the Gumstix is sort of like that, though

> considerably more expensive and power hungry.

It seems pretty nice, but I wonder about those steep prices.

--
Andy Valencia
Home page: http://www.vsta.org/andy/
To contact me: http://www.vsta.org/contact/andy.html