Which board to buy

[ebclr]

What you did with the things you already have ?

[psysc0rpi0n]

What you did with the things you already have ?

As I said above, I did small things just to see stuff working, like the H-bridges, triangle wave generator, step motor stuff, DC motor stuff.

[beeryt]

I started with a teensy 2.0 with my university and then expanded my collection to an Arduino and a Raspberry Pi

[Back2Volts]

RasPi is not a true embedded platform. It is a poor man's Linux computer.

I am aware of that fact.    He made a statement about moving heavy processing loads from his notebook...   I do not see an Arduino doing that.   

If it can be faster than my laptop at some tasks, and if those tasks includes heavy processing, than I can remember something I might be able to do. Anyway, that's an whole other matter.

His statement "I want something that is 100% Linux compatible."  made me think more of a RPi than of a typical embeded system, but I am probably wrong.   May be things have changed and the latest Arduino hardware can do it.

[psysc0rpi0n]

Well, I know that this post will probably leads to nowhere for several reasons. I haven't stated what what my goal was,  or what kind of knowledge I have and also I don't have my mind cleared of what I really want to do. Also when it comes to decide what to buy, each one of us have different opinions and as there is a such huge offer in the market, it will be really difficult to choose any platform.

When I talked about to be 100% Linux compatible I meant that the platform should be able to accept third party software to compile and upload programs and was that third party software that would have to be 100% compatible with Linux because I have been trying to compile a small .c program written with Arduino C like code and avrdude complains about undefined functions such as Serial.begin or DigitalWrite or AnaloRead... This obviously has something to do with not included .c heders (.h files). And for some of the functions I know how to solve the problem but for functions such as Serial.begin or Serial.println I do not know!

About the heavy load tasks I talked about, I was thinking about bitcoin mining. I know that pior to 2013, FPGAs were used to this. After that Asic chips were developed and FPGA's are no longer profitable. Anyway, but if I went to this subject, I would only want to see an FPGA's "doing" bitcoin mining, it was not to be doing it for long time. As I say, just to see stuff working.

[stj]

if your using Linux, the Nucleo and Discovery boards are good.
the compiler is GCC and you can upload by just copying the file over usb to the board.
it acts like a usb-stick and self-flashes!

[newbrain]

Well, I know that this post will probably leads to nowhere for several reasons. I haven't stated what what my goal was,  or what kind of knowledge I have and also I don't have my mind cleared of what I really want to do. Also when it comes to decide what to buy, each one of us have different opinions and as there is a such huge offer in the market, it will be really difficult to choose any platform.

That's the beauty of forums and internet in general  , but the majority here seems to agree that Disco/Nucleos are OK to learn about ARM MCUs.
I see you have a J-Link, in this case even a cheap minimum STM32 system would do...you can't go wrong for that kind of money!

When I talked about to be 100% Linux compatible I meant that the platform should be able to accept third party software to compile and upload programs and was that third party software that would have to be 100% compatible with Linux because I have been trying to compile a small .c program written with Arduino C like code and avrdude complains about undefined functions such as Serial.begin or DigitalWrite or AnaloRead... This obviously has something to do with not included .c heders (.h files). And for some of the functions I know how to solve the problem but for functions such as Serial.begin or Serial.println I do not know!

OK. Maybe I do not understand exactly what you mean, but I have the impression you are mixing up some levels here...so, please, don't take offense if I seem patronizing!

• When you program for a MCU on Win/Mac/Linux you need a cross compilation toolchain, i.e. a series of tools that take your source code and translates it (compile, link with needed libs if any etc.) for the specific processor.
• Several toolchains exist, including editors and IDE that make your life easier, for all the major host (your PC) and target (the MCU) platforms.
• For each target MCU you'll generally need a separate set of include and startup files, they are provided by the MCU vendor. A Linux (or Windows, or OsX) stdio.h will not help in any way when compiling for an ATMega or an ARM Cortex-M.
• Vendors often also provide some kind of driver library, to access the on-chip peripherals without resorting to register manipulation. Quality, bloat and opinions differ wildly.
• The Arduino ide is just one example of an integrated toolchain, which also brings along all the Arduino libraries.
• Avrdude is only the last link of the chain: flashing of the MCU. It ingest the results of compilation and linking and tries to write them to the HW (through some kind of programmer, included the one in Arduino bootloader). It does not know about missing stuff.
• So, missing those methods has nothing to do with Linux, but rather with the fact that the Arduino libraries and include files have not been passed to the compiler and linker (avr-gcc), either directly or through a Makefile.
• In the other thread you've received already some good advice about this.

if your using Linux, the Nucleo and Discovery boards are good.
the compiler is GCC and you can upload by just copying the file over usb to the board.
it acts like a usb-stick and self-flashes!

Please note that's only true for the most recent Discovery boards(STM32F764 onward?), which include ST-Link 2.1.
The older ones (e.g. STM32F4 and STM32F429 Discos) only included ST-Link 2 - no storage device emulation.

[psysc0rpi0n]

No offense taken at all...

In fact I made a mistake while typing. I was thinking about avr-gcc or avr-g++ instead and I typed avrdude! I know avrdude is the last chain of that tool chain you talked about! My bad!

Unfortunately, for instance, AVR Studio has no support for Linux! This is what I mean about the software to be 100% compatible with Linux. I know there are thousands of tools out there that replace the proprietary software and that was why I was trying to use avr-gcc to compile an Arduino C like program to try to figure out what is needed for a successful compilation!

[Rasz]

whatever else you pick http://www.ebay.com/itm/STM32F103C8T6-ARM-STM32-Minimum-System-Development-Board-Module-For-Arduino-DHUS-/321569700934 is a no brainer at $2.5

I get the feeling you might be looking more for projects than new hardware, maybe prowl adafruit for ideas (forum and yt channel), also search for a hackerspace near you

[stj]

Unfortunately, for instance, AVR Studio has no support for Linux!

AVR Studio-7 rarely works in windows either - go look at the complaints on the atmel forum!!
they really screwed up when they wrapped it around visual studio.

[stj]

Please note that's only true for the most recent Discovery boards(STM32F764 onward?), which include ST-Link 2.1.
The older ones (e.g. STM32F4 and STM32F429 Discos) only included ST-Link 2 - no storage device emulation.

i didnt know that, but some can be upgraded to J-Link OB
https://www.segger.com/jlink-st-link.html

[psysc0rpi0n]

whatever else you pick http://www.ebay.com/itm/STM32F103C8T6-ARM-STM32-Minimum-System-Development-Board-Module-For-Arduino-DHUS-/321569700934 is a no brainer at $2.5

I get the feeling you might be looking more for projects than new hardware, maybe prowl adafruit for ideas (forum and yt channel), also search for a hackerspace near you

What you mean by "hackerspace"?

[stj]

like a club for people making stuff.
https://wiki.london.hackspace.org.uk/view/London_Hackspace

[zapta]

I would suggest start simple

Latter introduce complexity

take a look here

https://developer.mbed.org/platforms/

Chose one and go.

+1.

And if you will choose an NXP based board, you will get a free single package install IDE + toolchain  (lpcxpresso) with a standard Eclipse UI that runs on all three platforms.

[mac.6]

Same with kinetis part btw, but different IDE based on eclipse too.