ARM Cortex

[Mr RB]

I'm looking at two Dev board from MikroE; one is ARM Stellaris and using the TI chips, the other using the ARM STM32 chips. I have heard the STM chips use less current, which will be fairly important.

Does anyone have any experience with these and can say about the strengths and weaknesses of each family?

It's also importat to me that cheap versions of the chips are available and they are as "standalone" as possible, I don't want to have to buy and solder 3 chips to make a project when I can buy and solder 1 chip to make the project.

 

[DirtyLude]

Typing on the iPad so this will be brief, but I would suggest the stm32 or lpc1xxx series. Both have cortex m0 variant with low current capabilities. Both have cheap manufacturer dev boards with the jtag programmers built in. Both have decent hobby support 'relatively means, not even close to PIC or AVR, but it can be found.'

I've used lpc11xx, lpc13xx, and lpc17xx. I have an stm32 develop board, the m0 version, but I haven't played with it yet. Doubt I will. Lpc11xx and lpc13xx share peripherals so they are very similar, lpc17xx and lpc18xx have more advanced peripherals.

Edit: lpc1114 comes in a 28pin dip package now, if that's important to you. Lpc1114 is a low power m0.

 

[Mr RB]

Thank you for the DirtyLude. Yeah I saw on ebay the micro board with LPC cortex M0, and usb programmer attached I think was about $16?

I appreciate any feedback regarding family decisions as i don't want to be chopping and changing and trying every new thing, I'd rather pick a family and buy a comprehensive MikroE dev board and then just move forward with it.

Do you know if a devboard for STM family chips will be pin compatible with LPC family chips, and/or if the STM programmer will program the LPC chips?

 

[DirtyLude]

Programmers and programming environment are another thing. No offence to MikroE ARM compiler, but I've never heard of them outside of PIC and I have no idea what programmers they support other than their own and what chips they support other than STM and Stellaris. I don't know how much support you will get hobby wise. If you are not making commercial products, I would suggest a non-commercial license to Rowley Crossworks ($150). It's just a GCC compiler at this time, but they support a lot JTAG programmers and chips and there is a lot of support. It's just real easy to use.

I'm using and Olimex USB-ARM-JTAG with a Crossworks adapter for SWD, but I have a J-Link clone here (I got it from DX.com) I'm looking at trying and I have the STM32 F0 Discovery board that comes with the ST-Link 2 JTAG programmer on it. I'm going to try that with the LPC chips to see if it works. Not certain why it wouldn't. There are no ARM chips from different manufacturers that are pin compatible that I know of. They are all very different.

I'm not a fan of the MikroE style board where they try to put everything on a single board, but I understand that some might be. If you want to step into it first, the cheap Devel boards with JTAG debuggers built in are:

STM32 F0 Discovery - The F0 is the cortex-m0 board. Crossworks supports the ST-Link 2 programmer.
LPCXPRESSO LPC1114 - again, the M0 board. Crossworks does not support the LPCXpresso JTAG debugger that comes on this board. I think it's only supported by Code Red.
EK-LM4F120XL from TI - Just heard about this yesterday. This is a cortex-M4F device (M3 with DSP extensions). Not certain what the programmer is here or if it's supported by anything other than TI's crippleware programming environment. It's only $5, though. Same price as a MSP430 launchpad. You can get it here: http://estore.ti.com/Stellaris-LaunchPad.aspx EDIT: The JTAG programmer is the Stellaris ICDI which Crossworks supports.

MicroBuilder is a good place for LPC support.
**broken link removed**

 

[Mr RB]

Thanks again for all the information!

Yes it's for commercial programming and I do like the MikroE dev boards, and have over the years built a system of working wiht that type dev board and a lot of tools etc that plug into the dev boards, so I'm fairly set on that side. MikroE ARM compiler is fairly new but they constantly upgrade and improve so I don't have a problem with that. I have a big dislike of free GCC compilers and trying to get things working, maybe just from some bad experiences.

I don't have much knowlege of the TI stellaris stuff apart from a few hours reading up. They do seem cheap, but there are complaints of double or triple the current consumption compared to the STM equivalents. I'm not too keen on the stellaris "hardware in code" concept either but then I don't have a great understanding of exactly what the issues with that might be either.

At this point i'm leaning towards the STM ARM dev board for a few small reasons, but there is no rush so when i get time I'll keep reading the STM datasheets (oh the joy) and soak up some more info.

 

[Ubergeek63]

the new proto from production:

 

[Ubergeek63]

Hi Dirty...

I have been telling all the little PIClits that for a LONG TIME.

KEIL BTW has a free environment for the LPCs for 32K builds.

Dan

 

[Tang]

MOD Edit:- I hope this wasn't spam...

2 year old thread...**broken link removed**