Low cost (non arduino) microcontroller platform

[Alexander Ray]

I know this is not arduino (and is actually gonna be a direct competitor), but i figured you all should know (if you dont already):

TI has released a small, cheap embedded platform for the low price of $4.30 each:

http://hackaday.com/2010/06/22/ti-makes-a-big-bid-for-the-hobby-market/

Not as powerful as ATmega328, but at a fraction of the price of an arduino it could make a really tempting alternative. very very small memory space, and industry-quality (i.e. craptastic) IDEs, so probably not as fun, but maybe this price point is low enough that you could add a microcontroller to a project now that you didnt want to sink $20-30 for an arduino into.

I'm going to try to get one when the site stops lagging.

~Alex

[Michael Fulbright]

Alexander Ray wrote:
>
> Not as powerful as ATmega328, but at a fraction of the price of an
> arduino it could make a really tempting alternative. very very small
> memory space, and industry-quality (i.e. craptastic) IDEs, so probably
> not as fun, but maybe this price point is low enough that you could
> add a microcontroller to a project now that you didnt want to sink
> $20-30 for an arduino into.

I would just get an ATMega processor for a few dollars and program a
working Arduino project into it for a low-cost alternative to buying a
full fledged Arduino board.

Just use the $20-30 Arduino board for development.

Michael

[Tom Karches]

Another inexpensive option for Arduino embedded projects is the Ardweeny at $10 :

http://www.solarbotics.com/products/kardw/

Or the Rock Botton Freeduino for $8 :

http://www.1strecon.org/TheShoppe/freeduino/rbfk.shtml

At these prices, my time is worth $5 to get a more established IDE with Arduino/Freeduino, but competition is generally always good.

--tom

--
Tom Karches
tkar...@gmail.com

[Matt Ball]

To Michael's point, building up your own arduino is documented really
well on this NYU page:
http://itp.nyu.edu/physcomp/Tutorials/ArduinoBreadboard

You can use a duemilanove to burn the bootloader onto a standard
ATMega. They also say you should get an FTDI board, which can be
useful for other things as well..

Matt

[Brian Cottingham]

I'm excited about the TI Launchpad. The other solutions suggested on this list cost more and require more work than the Launchpad. While there's definitely value in staying inside the Arduino community, there are a lot of projects I'd permanently devote a $4.30 board that I wouldn't stick a $10 or $15 board into. The Launchpad has so little horsepower that I expect any projects where I'd miss the benefits of the Arduino community will demand I use an Arduino instead of the Launchpad anyway.

-Brian

[Michael Fulbright]

Brian Cottingham wrote:
> I'm excited about the TI Launchpad. The other solutions suggested on
> this list cost more and require more work than the Launchpad. While
> there's definitely value in staying inside the Arduino community,
> there are a lot of projects I'd permanently devote a $4.30 board that
> I wouldn't stick a $10 or $15 board into. The Launchpad has so little
> horsepower that I expect any projects where I'd miss the benefits of
> the Arduino community will demand I use an Arduino instead of the
> Launchpad anyway.
>

The Launchpad certainly is inexpensive!

Not sure about the IDE, but it is based on Eclipse, which should be a
good thing. The Arduino IDE is a somewhat simplicstic compared to a
full blown IDE like Eclipse, which can be a good or bad thing depending
on how you value such environments. For example, the Arduino
environment is small and easy to get going. An Eclipse based IDE is not
going to have a small footprint!

Looks like the Lauchpad environment has a only a Beta Linux version, not
sure about Mac.

The licensing page for the Launchpad is a little dizzying, but I think
basically it comes with a license to generate up to 16KB of code. Since
the Launchpad is only 2KB thats no problem.

On the other hand, the Arduino community is a real value, as there are
things like NewSoftSerial which were created by the community and make
an enormous difference.

Also I'd be concerned how long the Launchpad will be available, and how
long at what seems an introductory price (TI has to be losing money at
$4.30 don't you think?).

Also the Arduino boards have actual headers to put wires into, etc. You
could solder those on the Launchpad but after all that have you saved
much in time/money over a cheaper Arduino alternative?

Great to have choices! I would have loved to have had access to any of
these 10 years ago at three times the price of an Arduino.

Michael

[Alexander Ray]

As for the chips you can develop with this, heres at least a partial list:

http://www.ti.com/ww/en/mcu/valueline/index.shtml?DCMP=Value_Line&HQS=Other+OT+430value

These things are already ~$1.20 at single unit volumes, so you wouldn't even need to put the dev board in every application.

[Brian Cottingham]

I'm not concerned about the 2KB flash on the Launchpad, but is 128B RAM useful? I'm still very new to microcontroller/embedded/low-level programming, but if I'm doing my math right, a 128B on a 16-bit processor (i.e., 16 bits/word) would mean I could use a whopping 8 ints at a time. Can you do anything more than measure one or two sensors with that?

-Brian

[KensR...@aol.com]

I have programmed a couple of simple applications with 430 devices.  For low cost the USB key programmer with 430 development board are approximately $20 and you can get three additional development boards for $10.  It has been a few months since I bought them so the prices are appromixate.

 

One big problem that I see for 430 robotic applications is you need level converter chips if you are going to control regular 5 V RC servos or 5 V sensors.  However there is a lot of 3 V sensors out there and some of the real small RC servos operate below 3 volts.

 

The real big plus is the 430 uses so little power the batteries last for almost the self life of the battery.

 

Ken