Moving from an arduino to ARM microcontroller, seeking advise.

[rstofer]

The mbed stuff can be a way to get a project off the ground quickly, but in a way it is not all that different from Arduino - still a lot of extras, still a lot of shockingly odd things going on under the covers if you have to dig into the details to figure out why something isn't working right.

mbed is indeed a lot like Arduino in terms of libraries.  For my one big LPC1768 project I needed TCP/IP and I didn't want to write it myself.  Their lwIP library worked fine.  I didn't use any of the other libraries, I just wrote the code in C and called it good.  In fact, I had to go this way because the mbed libraries didn't support interrupt driven SPI slave mode and this was an absolute requirement.  So, sure, I had to fool around with the NVIC and write a little handler.  No big deal!

On the LPC1768 chip there are two 16k regions of memory used for USB and such.  These aren't generally visible although GCC knows perfectly well how to get there.  I needed these two areas for buffers and I didn't see any library code at the time that would allow their use.  No problem, C will get you there with a wee bit of help from the linker.

Like the Arduino, you can use as much or as little of the library code as you desire.  Being able to just pull in an entire TCP/IP stack is fairly powerful.  Add a MagJack and you're up and running on the network.

Things have changed quite a lot since I put that together in 2011.  What is particularly interesting is the STM32F boards being added to the platform.  OTOH, I kind of like CubeMX and the autogenerated code and this seems more workable using a local toolchain rather than the web based tools.

[Mr. Scram]

It seems Mbed scores awfully high on the bullshit bingo. "Cloud services", "IoT" and best of all "transformative device-to-data platform"

[ogden]

It seems Mbed scores awfully high on the bullshit bingo. "Cloud services", "IoT" and best of all "transformative device-to-data platform"

Indeed. Yet it's still best offer for beginner who wants to get his hands dirty with ARM

[David Hess]

I’ve been working with Arduino for a while and from what i’ve read they don’t seem to be the best for production. Is there any specific reason to that, or is it because of the fact that they are only used for prototyping.

There is not much to an Arduino based design so it would tend to be laid out as part of the project instead of installed as a separate module because AVR microcontrollers are available in easy to use packages.

With ARM a separate module which contains all of the difficult to mount chips is more appealing.

As far as using ARM modules, I would pay very close attention to the development environment and exclude those which require online development; they always seem to lead to trouble.

[rstofer]

It seems Mbed scores awfully high on the bullshit bingo. "Cloud services", "IoT" and best of all "transformative device-to-data platform"

I think all of that started when the mbed.org site was bought out by ARM.  I don't recall seeing that crap in the early days.

It is not imperative to use the online toolchain but I like it a lot.  Several reasons really but among them is the fact that the latest and greatest tools are available.  And the libraries are kept current.  I like the online IDE and all mbed compatible devices program the same way:  You drop the binary onto the USB mass storage device created on your PC.  No JTAG, no Serial Programming, no vendor specific process at all.  Just drag and drop.  In most cases, the IDE will just drop it in the right place, given permission.  And I can work on my project from any computer in the world with Internet access and a browser.

Nevertheless, I like Eclipse and the GNU toolchain.  It's easy enough to bring the entire project (including the libraries) down to the local machine.  I also like Rowley CrossWorks.  They have an inexpensive 'personal' licensing scheme.

The only thing that is truly unique about the mbed approach is the drag and drop binary.  Otherwise, it's just another platform, among many.  I got along fine with the serial programming of the LPC2106 and LPC2148 although the Rowley CrossConnect JTAG gadget worked a lot better.  Particularly useful for debugging.  I don't tend to do a lot of in-circuit debugging but having a JTAG dongle is a nice way to do it.  I tend to use printf()...

[Joeri_VH]

You could start by buying one of the ARM (SAMD21) based Arduino's, keeping your current/favourite project.
The M0 Pro has an integrated debugger, the others (M0, MKR series) have SWD headers.
That way you can get used to the new hardware in the Arduino environment and then evolve to the full Atmel Studio with far better environment and real debugger. To make this easier you can start by importing an Arduino project, so you get exposed to the vastly superior environment and the debugger without having to code everything from the ground up.