Arduino Vs. Teensy Vs. other alternatives?

[Ethan Shalev]

I'm in the process of builing an IR remote control for my A/C, that I can control over the Internet.

 

I started developing for Arduino, but as I got more familiar with dev-boards, I learned of other alternatives, some of which are smaller and cheaper.

 

What are your considerations when chosing a dev-board? why would I chose Arduino over Teensy, for instance?

 

For my project I need something that can serve as a web-server, run Arduino code, and has one free PWM.

 

what are your thoughts?

[Yair Reshef]

compatibility (with various shield, enough memory, enough pins)

availability (whats in my drawer)

physically (those it fit the box)

economically (is it gone or will i be able to re-purpose it, how many units i need)

--

yair99@gmail
050-6301212
tlv, israel

[Udi Finkelstein]

Things to consider:
Do you want something that can run the Arduino environment (or Arduino-like)?
Do you want shield compatibility?
What's your code size? data size? do you need eeprom? how much?
How many I/O's and what type? digital? PWM? analog in? analog out? how many bits in ther A/D or D/A?
Do you need a high performance CPU (32 bit, ARM Cortex M0/M3/M4, PIC32, etc.)?

Teensy series (http://pjrc.com/teensy/index.html):
Teensy 2.0/Teensy 2.0++/teensy 3 are nice ( I actually bought all 3, but haven't had the time to play with them).
v3 is based on an ARM chip (freescale Kinetis)
Highlights -
breadboard friendly
You can program them via an Arduino-like environment (teensyduino) or normal gcc flow.
tons of examples, including many USB profiles *(serial/keyboard/mouse/joystick/MIDI, etc.).
Not compatible with Arduino form factor and shields.

TI Launchpad:
Latest revisions has an MSP430G2253 that has 16K flash vs 2K on the original chip that came with it.
Still costs $4.30
Energia is a port of the Arduino environment for the MSP430, so it can feel like one from a SW perspective.
http://energia.nu/
http://forum.43oh.com/forum/28-energia/

Stellaris launchpad:
Running an ARM cortex M4 with 128K flash
pin compatible with original launchpad, plus another row of pins (similar to arduino vs arduino mega)
$13 (used to be $5 at introduction) with free shipping (AFAIK)
Not supported by Energia at the moment, but next release will.

Raspberry Pi
$35 (~$42 at your door - from RS)
backordered
Running full Linux with 512MB RAM
Requires an SD card - extra cost.
Limited on board I/O

For your project:
If you want arduino compatibility and ethernet, your choices are limited:
http://imall.iteadstudio.com/development-platform/arduino/arduino-compatible-mainboard.html?external_resources=25
Board with onboard ethernet and SD card is $29 (notice this board is not arduino shield compatible).
alternatively, stand alone ethernet shield starts at $9.07 at ebay.

On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 3:41 PM, Ethan Shalev <shalev...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Yair Reshef]

thnx udi for the details, you seem to know youe micros :)

+1 for the iBoard. looks like a nice combo, but make sure its a solid one. 

i got scorched by sparkfun, they used to sell their own mix called "Ethernet pro" , but they botched the design, and some board wouldn't init the LAN chip on boot. 

evil corp they are, they didn't acknowledged the problem, just silently discontinued the product and started selling the competition. 

i bought 20 pcs with 4 lemons. meh. 

but the ones that work, were great. 

i used UDP packets (and EEPROM to store the ip, mac). 

protip -> make sure you give diff MAC address to each unit (*facepalm*)

[Udi Finkelstein]

did you fix your 4 lemons? seems easy judging by the comments.
another tip:
don't just choose MAC number off thin air.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAC_address
There are a few bits that needs to have the proper values (unicast, and maybe globally unique).
other than that, make sure none of your other devices has the same mac (as yair said).