help. leaving pic for arm... but which arm????

[poorchava]

I think that ST is the best when it comes to entry level stuff. You can spend like 10-15 Euro and get a devoted which works with commercial IDEs and with free ones too. There are at least two free toolchains (CooCox and em::blocks) that work out of the box and have no limitations whatsoever. I think Freescale stuff might be just the same, but but I have never given them a serious try. It seems to me that if we compare parts on similar price level from Freescale and ST, STs parts offer higher performance and more memory.

NXP doesn't seem friendly to a novice user. Especially in terms of hardware debuggers and free IDE support.

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[zapta]

I think that ST is the best when it comes to entry level stuff. You can spend like 10-15 Euro and get a devoted which works with commercial IDEs and with free ones too. There are at least two free toolchains (CooCox and em::blocks) that work out of the box and have no limitations whatsoever.

Do these toolchains support Linux and Mac OSX?   If not, not a good choice for open source projects.

NXP doesn't seem friendly to a novice user. Especially in terms of hardware debuggers and free IDE support.

LPCXpresso is a single package install of the entire toolchain and IDE, it runs on Linux, Mac OSX and Windows, and supports out of the box low cost evaluation boards with built in hardware debuggers.

http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/OM13014,598/568-7517-ND/2700004

[jimon]

I think that ST is the best when it comes to entry level stuff. You can spend like 10-15 Euro and get a devoted which works with commercial IDEs and with free ones too. There are at least two free toolchains (CooCox and em::blocks) that work out of the box and have no limitations whatsoever.

Do these toolchains support Linux and Mac OSX?   If not, not a good choice for open source projects.

GCC ARM + OpenOCD = works everywhere, and you can add IDE_of_choise and build_system_of_choice

[zapta]

I think that ST is the best when it comes to entry level stuff. You can spend like 10-15 Euro and get a devoted which works with commercial IDEs and with free ones too. There are at least two free toolchains (CooCox and em::blocks) that work out of the box and have no limitations whatsoever.

Do these toolchains support Linux and Mac OSX?   If not, not a good choice for open source projects.

GCC ARM + OpenOCD = works everywhere, and you can add IDE_of_choise and build_system_of_choice

You recommended CooCox and em::blocks.  Do they run on Linux and Mac OSX?

One of the reasons I chose lpcxpresso is the easy of installation on all three major operating systems. A single package installs the toolchain, CPU specific libraries and IDE and they all work together out of the box.  No more toolchain hassle, just like Arduino.

[poorchava]

Do these toolchains support Linux and Mac OSX?   If not, not a good choice for open source projects.

I don't care. People using OSX for hardware engineering (electronic, mechanic or whatever else) should already give up. All of the serious stuff runs on Windows, deal with it. I despise Apple anyway. As for Linux, they probably run ok under Wine.

LpcExpresso is code limited. IIR OpenOCD doesn't support the debugger built into LPC boards because NXP refused to cooperate with OpenOCD crew and their communication protocl is crypto-secured or something.

There is also Atmel and TI. Never had much experience with TI except for Stellaris Launchpad (the uC there was quite nice) but they seem rather expensive. Also, Cortex-M3 stuff was made by LuminaryMicro and is famous for herrific bugs.

I've been dealing with Atmel SAM4S uC for the past year in my day job, and this uC has a handful of pretty horrific undocumented bugs. Also, the way they have adopted Visual Studio (which by itself is a really nice piece of software) for an embedded IDE sucks really bad.

[zapta]

I don't care. People using OSX for hardware engineering (electronic, mechanic or whatever else) should already give up.

Mac OSX is very popular in the maker community so windows only tools and designs are less valuable for open source projects. For closed designed it's less important.

As for lpcxpresso debugger, I got from digikey  $20 Link 2 hardware debugger that works great out of the box with lpcxpresso.

[jnz]

I don't care. People using OSX for hardware engineering (electronic, mechanic or whatever else) should already give up.

Mac OSX is very popular in the maker community so windows only tools and designs are less valuable for open source projects. For closed designed it's less important.

As for lpcxpresso debugger, I got from digikey  $20 Link 2 hardware debugger that works great out of the box with lpcxpresso.

I won't say no one who uses Mac knows what they are doing of course, but at the same time... just stop making life hard on yourself and use windows like a professional    He has a point that if you want to get work done, don't bother with trying to do embedded programming on a mac. If it's a fun-time hobby, yea, go for it if you want the extra hurdles I guess.

[jnz]

What is to prevent someone from resetting the module into that mode and writing their own firmware for your hardware?

Why do you care about this? If they've bought your hardware, why would you care if they wrote their own firmware for it?

I wanted to update on this. Besides what Tandy covered on fraud.

I don't want my stupid competition to be able to start working on their clone, using my hardware as a fully-functional pre-made dev kit.

[funkathustra]

Do these toolchains support Linux and Mac OSX?   If not, not a good choice for open source projects.

I don't care. People using OSX for hardware engineering (electronic, mechanic or whatever else) should already give up. All of the serious stuff runs on Windows, deal with it.

I love my MacBook Air, but I totally agree, and would never think to do any electronics work in OS X. Most of the commonly-used engineering tools (Altium / Dassault / AutoDesk / Altera / Xilinx / Microsemi / Keil / Microsoft) are Windows-only (with some emerging Linux support), so there's really no incentive for companies to invest in OS X workstations. There's some incentive to use Linux workstations, since many embedded projects are Linux-based. But I see near-zero reasons to support OS X.

Similar to other Eclipse-based IDEs that have Linux and OS X support (like LPCXpresso and Code Composer Studio?), Freescale's Kinetis Design Studio is basically a port of CodeWarrior (which was a fork of Eclipse) to a vanilla Eclipse CDT system + plugins, so it's easier for them to maintain. An added bonus is that it was really easy to package up Linux and OS X versions of it, so they did. If that's not a trivial thing to do, they wouldn't do it, since no one uses OS X, and very few people use Linux in the embedded electronics world.

If, for whatever reason, you're stuck on OS X, then Freescale Kinetis Design Studio and LPCXpresso are your only options, I believe.

LpcExpresso is code limited. IIR OpenOCD doesn't support the debugger built into LPC boards because NXP refused to cooperate with OpenOCD crew and their communication protocl is crypto-secured or something.

LPCXpresso is code-size limited to something like 256k, which I've never ran into problems with. I don't mind it as an IDE, but, I mean, it's basically just Eclipse, so it's pretty familiar. Stay away from open-source ARM debuggers / OpenOCD. That stuff is absolute crap designed for people who are more interested in nerding out over toolchains than they are about actually getting stuff working.

I have a desk drawer full of knock-off parallel-port programmers, JLink clones, OpenOCD ARM debuggers, and all sorts of crap. I want to puke whenever I think about how much time I spent trying to set that shit up. Since I'm a lot more experienced now, it probably wouldn't be so bad, but I would never, ever, ever recommend those sorts of tools to someone who's just getting his or her feet wet in this stuff. You should be writing LED blinky programs, not flash configuration files.

There is also Atmel and TI. Never had much experience with TI except for Stellaris Launchpad (the uC there was quite nice) but they seem rather expensive. Also, Cortex-M3 stuff was made by LuminaryMicro and is famous for herrific bugs.

Atmel is complete garbage. Seriously. Everything they produce is overpriced and full of bugs. The Luminary Micro... err, TI... ARM parts are lovely, but way overpriced. I don't mind Code Composer Studio, though.

I've been dealing with Atmel SAM4S uC for the past year in my day job, and this uC has a handful of pretty horrific undocumented bugs. Also, the way they have adopted Visual Studio (which by itself is a really nice piece of software) for an embedded IDE sucks really bad.

Totally agree. I use Visual Studio every day for WPF/ASP.NET C# / Win32 C++ development, and it's a very productive IDE, but the Visual Studio Shell that Atmel uses doesn't have any of the MS IntelliSense stuff -- to emulate that behavior, they have a crappy proprietary system that kinda-sorta tries, but fails miserably.

[funkathustra]

I think that ST is the best when it comes to entry level stuff. You can spend like 10-15 Euro and get a devoted which works with commercial IDEs and with free ones too. There are at least two free toolchains (CooCox and em::blocks) that work out of the box and have no limitations whatsoever. I think Freescale stuff might be just the same, but but I have never given them a serious try. It seems to me that if we compare parts on similar price level from Freescale and ST, STs parts offer higher performance and more memory.

Comparing Freescale and ST is kind of a mixed bag.

Freescale has really good low-quantity pricing across their entire portfolio (useful for hobbyists), and they generally have better analog -- especially in their lower-end stuff. ST's mid-range Cortex-M0 stuff is overall, probably a better bang for your buck than Freescale's, but there are a few exceptions.

In the ultra-low-cost realm, it's hard to beat Freescale. The MKE04Z8 is less than 50 cents each in volume. But that MCU only has 8K of flash -- ST's lowest-end stuff starts at 32K (!!!), and is a tad cheaper than Freescale's equivalent 32K parts in quantity (though Freescale is cheaper in low-volume cost).

Freescale, however, has really economical mid-range Cortex-M4 cores, so I end up using them in a lot of places where previously I could only afford an ST Cortex-M0 core. Compare Freescale's cheapest Cortex-M4-powered MK02FN64 part with ST's equivalent STM32F302K8. Freescale's part runs faster (100 MHz vs 72 MHz), has better analog (twelve channels of 16-bit ADCs, 16-bit DAC, two comparators), and costs a fifth the price.

However, in the ultra-high-end Cortex-M4 space, ST has a definite edge. Freescale's high-end K60 and K70 are formidable beasts. If you want to get to 150 MHz / 1 MB of flash, you'll be stuck with a BGA or a monster 144-pin QFP. ST chips can hit 168 MHz / 1 MB with a much more friendly 64-LQFP (that tends to run a little cheaper), and from there, you can zoom out to 180 MHz / 2 MB parts that Freescale doesn't even make.

[poorchava]

...ST's lowest-end stuff starts at 32K (!!!),

Not true, the STM32F030 actually has 16k. I use those chips on regular basis for all the small things, but code memory is a bit tight.

Freescale, however, has really economical mid-range Cortex-M4 cores, so I end up using them in a lot of places where previously I could only afford an ST Cortex-M0 core. Compare Freescale's cheapest Cortex-M4-powered MK02FN64 part with ST's equivalent STM32F302K8. Freescale's part runs faster (100 MHz vs 72 MHz), has better analog (twelve channels of 16-bit ADCs, 16-bit DAC, two comparators), and costs a fifth the price.

Holy shit, it's about 1.6€ from Farnell. That's nice! Too bad that QFP version costs more than double that (WTF?!)

and from there, you can zoom out to 180 MHz / 2 MB parts that Freescale doesn't even make.

MK66FN2M is exactly that, 180MHz, 2MB

[Muxr]

OS X works just fine. For anything that doesn't work just use Virtualbox + Windows VM. You can passthrough USB ports, it's how I program FPGAs. It's really not an issue. It's the only thing I use Windows for. I use git so I just map the drive to my git project, and since I prefer the command line for using git, I do all that stuff in the OS X terminal.

For everything else there are Unixy alternatives. MCU programming (AVR, esp8266 and STM32 toolchains), enclosure design, PCB design, Logic Analyser.. I use OS X natively.

[Sal Ammoniac]

I wanted to update on this. Besides what Tandy covered on fraud.

I don't want my stupid competition to be able to start working on their clone, using my hardware as a fully-functional pre-made dev kit.

I think the concerns that someone will use your hardware as a dev-kit for their own clone development is possible, but probably a little far-fetched. Spend your time making your product great and less time trying to make it unclonable and you'll probably do better in the market.

I like Tandy's idea regarding loading non-factory FW. A solder link is a good idea that will eliminate 99% of those who would try to load alternate FW, but would still allow serious people to do it. I doubt the percentage of owners of a product that would load alternate FW on it would be more than a minuscule percentage of the total user base anyway. Joe Sixpack doesn't know what FW is, let alone have the skill or desire to replace it.