Looking for kits to play around with, got knee deep in MCU wars

[NorthGuy]

Zynq is a bit too complicated for some embedded projects as it 1) does not support any easily hand solderable package, and 2) runs full Linux which is not necessary in most times.

If someone can afford Zynq they certainly can afford a reflow oven, which makes it easier than hand soldering.

You don't have to run Linux if you don't want to.

[jmsigler]

With ARM M0 or M3 core plus all the other stuff, plus the FPGA like fabric, its a home run in my mind.

or Zynq - https://www.xilinx.com/products/silicon-devices/soc/zynq-7000.html

Hardly can get anything better.

Could also look at Microsemi's SmartFusion2 chipset which has an m3 and fpga fabric. I've built a board with an older qfp smartfusion chip and it wasn't too bad.

[tszaboo]

I am very suspicious why there are preformatted posts about Cypress PSoC everywhere. It seem to me that someone is copy/pasting things around in a lot of MCU-centric posts. Hmm...

This forum has a bunch of PSoC fanboys. Anytime you ask, why they like it: Because it has a bunch of gimmicky features, nobody asked for, and you need to look for the application to use it. I talked with a junior support engineer at Cypress. He told me he is new at the company, and he has no idea what all these features can be used for.

[AndyC_772]

I'm not entirely sure that 'junior support engineer is clueless' really qualifies as news, though, does it? 

I looked at PSoC last year but was disappointed at the lack of flexibility in analogue routing, and the poor performance of the digital logic. It's no substitute at all for a proper CPU + FPGA.

[tszaboo]

I am very suspicious why there are preformatted posts about Cypress PSoC everywhere. It seem to me that someone is copy/pasting things around in a lot of MCU-centric posts. Hmm...

This forum has a bunch of PSoC fanboys. Anytime you ask, why they like it: Because it has a bunch of gimmicky features, nobody asked for, and you need to look for the application to use it. I talked with a junior support engineer at Cypress. He told me he is new at the company, and he has no idea what all these features can be used for.

They are quite useful. You can save BOM cost and size by using integrated features such as comparators, opamps, and UDBs for simple but obscure serial protocol phy.
The random routable ADC allows for arbitrary ADC sequence, which is a feature not many MCUs have.
Their touch sense is top notch among "free" integrated cap sense in MCUs. So does their analog peripherals like opamps.
PSoC is easy to use with good software library, easy to use as Arduino, while still being high quality and versatility. Compiler and IDE is also good and free, with low cost kits and debuggers.
And finally, PSoC is cheap at low quantity. Their marketing strategy is not to sell 1 off at ridiculously high price and offer huge discount at 100k pcs.

They are amongst the most expensive microcontrollers you can buy. The built in opamps have the analog performance of a 7 cent LM358. I think this tells it all: The cheapest PSoC with cortex M3 costs twice as much, as a regular Cortex M3 from the same company.

[westfw]

Quote>[PSoC is] no substitute at all for a proper CPU + FPGA.Any microcontroller is no substitute for a $1000 Xeon CPU augmented by a $1000 FPGA.
Fortunately, not all problems require that, and sometimes a slow microcontroller with some configurable logic is just the thing...

I've followed PSoC for quite a while, and I was pretty pleased with the direction taken in PSoC 4 and 5 - adding general purpose "standard" microcontroller peripherals that DON'T require the configurable logic to do things.  I'm pretty sure that there are a lot of "mostly SW" engineers that are really happy not to need to build a UART before they can do serial IO.

[NorthGuy]

It's analog routing is quite flexible compared to most MCUs, though that's only limited to 1 bank of IO. However, try to find a cheap MCU with arbitrary ADC sequencing support, mixed SE/diff ADC and comparator?

Have you looked at Microchip PICs lately? ADCs, DACs, comparators, op-amps which can be internally interconnected. CPU independent logic cells which can trigger ADCs, timers etc. For a fraction of the cost ...

[danadak]

@Rasz

Wow, so It was a paid (employee on the clock) post after all

How did you jump to that conclusion ?


The PSOC Cypress forums had a store where a poster could earn points and redeem. That store ended long before I stopped posting over there. But I did redeem some points 7 years ago for a GPS and fish finders before the store came to an end. No, I was not employed, contractor, or otherwise at Cypress. I was, prior to all the posts at Cypress and eevblog  an FAE at Future, as such responsible for many CPU lines, Cypress one of them. Also Freescale, Zilog, uChip, forgot the rest.


@NANDBlog

They are amongst the most expensive microcontrollers you can buy. The built in opamps have the analog performance of a 7 cent LM358. I think this tells it all: The cheapest PSoC with cortex M3 costs twice as much, as a regular Cortex M3 from the same company.

Not exactly. the parts range from < $ 1 to < $ 20, in unit prices. Yes, OpAmps  outperform LM258, but not by much. Cypress does not offer bare M3, just PSOC M3. The high end parts have multiple A/D, DAC, DSP, Onboard Ref, route fabric, MSI like logic predefined components, or roll your own, and a ton of other HW.

This forum has a bunch of PSoC fanboys. Anytime you ask, why they like it: Because it has a bunch of gimmicky features, nobody asked for, and you need to look for the application to use it. I talked with a junior support engineer at Cypress. He told me he is new at the company, and he has no idea what all these features can be used for.

Maybe talk to experienced FAEs and users would be a better idea. Gimmicky, if I need a vanilla OpAmp, PGA, TIA, Comparator, nice to have it onboard. If I need a filter, eg. DSP, nice that its there. Or spend another $ 4-$6 to add it externally. If I need some specific msi like logic, or my own LUT, Verilog, nice to have it onboard. If I need a 20 bit A/D ……its there……….


No one should think ANY CPU/Vendor is perfect, such is true of PSOC. But many designs fit quite nicely into their architecture. Read their annual report on shipments, quite illuminating.


Regards, Dana.

[tszaboo]

Not exactly. the parts range from < $ 1 to < $ 20, in unit prices. Yes, OpAmps  outperform LM258, but not by much. Cypress does not offer bare M3, just PSOC M3. The high end parts have multiple A/D, DAC, DSP, Onboard Ref, route fabric, MSI like logic predefined components, or roll your own, and a ton of other HW.

I have to repeat myself. Digikey. I filter for Cortex M3, Cypress. Cheapest is MB9BF121JWQN-G-JNE2 which is a FM3 microcontroller, from cypress, cost is 3.36 dollars for single quantity, 1.7 in high quantity. Cheapest PSoC is CY8C5467LTI-LP003 7.53 dollars in single quantity, 4 in thousands. Both of them is made by Cypress. Competetive pricing? Hell no.
Yes, there are cheaper ones. Cortex M0+ usually. For people, who think having a grand total of 3 communication interfaces is enough.
I am just wondering, if PSoC fanboys lost all connection with reality, or they are getting payed to do these posts.

[^_^]

You get what you pay for.
If you want configurable architecture, don't want to put external components, then why not?
Also, Cypress surely has a great way to approach the newcomers compared to other vendors.

[westfw]

Psoc5, with CM3, is relatively expensive.   The psoc4, with cm0, is significantly cheaper (also having less programmable logic.  Down to "none", IIRC.)

[alexanderbrevig]

These discussions are always good fun so I'll chip in with my point of view.
PSoC is fun and a good way to get your feet wet with programmable logic. I know opinions differ, but I for one love their IDE, their framework and their general attitude toward newbs.  Great online community!
Their approach to BLE is the quickest way I've seen, and I wish I started with them instead of Nordic back when I was trying to figure out what the f*ck a GATT is. Also, it's fun to be able to make a matrix keypad driver that takes up no CPU time. Niche needs, but the cost is not too high for projects where you want to cut down on PCB spins due to silly mistakes or erratas.

Nordic Semiconductor is the way to go for mass production BLE. I found it an up-hill battle the first, second and third time. But eventually you learn to spend some time getting everything set up right. I've ended up using gcc and their CLI tools from linux. It's the way to go for NS I think. Good online community.

STM is fine, I've got to know the F103 quite well now and it's been an up hill battle. I would definitly point the next guy toward an F4. They have serious silicon bugs with some of their chips and one in the F103 bit me bad They are higly configurable/mappable but also quite complex and their HALs often works but are bloated and changing so much the arduino way of finding someone who has already done it is often a no go. I got an unofficial devboard and basically had to reimplement every demo for every peripheral I wanted to use. The good thing; they fix bugs and add workarounds in a good tempo. A very fractioned, weird community. I'd rather ask on here if I have questions.

PIC32MZ is my new for-hobby curiosity. So far I'm really pleased with most everything. Their HAL seems good, and the online community seems good. Seems to be an excellent peripheral-to-peripheral piping machine, and the MZ seems to be capable to do some dsp style things too. At least for my small FIR tests

Texas Instruments is my go-to for radio experimentation. They have excellent tools, and getting from 0 to a custom sub-gig protocol that actually works and is demo-able takes less than a day. Solid library of example code, nice and relatively light weight HALs. All in all I like them (just stay away from the older RF chips, they should be deprecated if you ask me).

NXP/ Freescale I'll probably not touch again until I have to. It was no fun. Nothing about using it was fun, for me at least.

What more? I still bring out my wiring/arduino board if I just want to do something as quick as possible. Like setting up some I2C test slave or the like.
I do think having some kind of LUA/JS/MicroPython kit in the bag is good to. They are fun and makes for good demonstrations (i.e talks at your work or whatever).
Lastly, some Linux device is nice too. Get one if only to say you know your way around it. The day might come when you need to impress someone with a face tracking gizmo, just don't tell them it's 40 lines of python straight off of the internet

This post turned out a lot longer than I intended, but there you go.
I tend to solve relatively small problems for clients who "have an idea", this has led me to implement little things with a lot of different platforms. None of them is the definitive best - and even if any were I'd recommend anyone to pick up more than one family and more than one manufacturer.
Those clients that "has an idea", some times even has the idea that you must use this or that family or that special manufacturer. Never a good day when the Idea Guy tries to also be the EE. 

[danadak]

@NANDBlog

I have to repeat myself. Digikey. I filter for Cortex M3, Cypress. Cheapest is MB9BF121JWQN-G-JNE2 which is a FM3 microcontroller, from cypress, cost is 3.36 dollars for single quantity, 1.7 in high quantity. Cheapest PSoC is CY8C5467LTI-LP003 7.53 dollars in single quantity, 4 in thousands. Both of them is made by Cypress. Competetive pricing? Hell no.
Yes, there are cheaper ones. Cortex M0+ usually. For people, who think having a grand total of 3 communication interfaces is enough.
I am just wondering, if PSoC fanboys lost all connection with reality, or they are getting payed to do these posts.

I stand corrected. Forgot about the buyout by Cypress of > Spansion > Fujitsu FM3 family, yes the Fuji parts are cheaper.

The following are selector guide/prices from Cypress, show PSOC 5LP parts < $4, 1KU.


http://www.cypress.com/PSoCPSG


Of course we have not discussed whats on the part of interest, memory sizes, and all the rest.

Not getting paid to post,  are you ?

Price of course to user is total system cost. Of course those are not the only considerations, and
we are ignoring OEM negotiated pricing quite different than public price lists. Non Cypress fanboys
should compare all attributes of design requirements.

PSOC is NOT the answer to all designs. Just many.



Regards, Dana.

[technix]

Will compiling with Cortex-M4F hard float help?

I think the likelyhood that a USB stack uses any floating point is next to zero, so no. It is possible to take advantage of the larger resister set in the floating point unit in some circumstances but I don't know if the usual compilers can do this.

At least using GCC and LLVM/clang, with -O2 or higher optimization level the compiler will perform automatic vectorization and make use of the FPU registers that way. This happens even in some library routines which receives optimized versions, and that includes memset and memcpy, which I make use of in my C startup code. This forces me to switch on the FPU the first instruction into the reset vector, just so the heavily optimized memcpy and memset would work.

[VEGETA]

Well, for me I like Arduino boards for doing anything fast and easy. However, being a PIC fan I have the all famous obsolete PIC16F877A which I use often. I don't recommend getting a dev board for PIC since it is very easy to use the chip itself and a good learning material.

However, I came to see some good boards such as GR-SAKURA and GR-PEACH from Renesas, but it is not popular and don't have support like other famous boards. In my opinion, Renesas wants to get into beginner/hobbyist market using their powerful AZ series of MPUs but their methods are wrong. They don't get the idea that it is useless for a beginner board if it is hard to get, pricey, and has poor support and few examples.

Other than that, I wanted to get STM discovery boards since they are cheap and a good start in ARM MCUs after spending time using PICs and Arduinos.

[technix]

Well, for me I like Arduino boards for doing anything fast and easy. However, being a PIC fan I have the all famous obsolete PIC16F877A which I use often. I don't recommend getting a dev board for PIC since it is very easy to use the chip itself and a good learning material.

However, I came to see some good boards such as GR-SAKURA and GR-PEACH from Renesas, but it is not popular and don't have support like other famous boards. In my opinion, Renesas wants to get into beginner/hobbyist market using their powerful AZ series of MPUs but their methods are wrong. They don't get the idea that it is useless for a beginner board if it is hard to get, pricey, and has poor support and few examples.

Other than that, I wanted to get STM discovery boards since they are cheap and a good start in ARM MCUs after spending time using PICs and Arduinos.

I have always been breadboard guy... STM32 on breadboard adapters too. Although I also had a few STM32-based Arduino-compatibles.

[Luminax]

Well, for me I like Arduino boards for doing anything fast and easy. However, being a PIC fan I have the all famous obsolete PIC16F877A which I use often. I don't recommend getting a dev board for PIC since it is very easy to use the chip itself and a good learning material.

However, I came to see some good boards such as GR-SAKURA and GR-PEACH from Renesas, but it is not popular and don't have support like other famous boards. In my opinion, Renesas wants to get into beginner/hobbyist market using their powerful AZ series of MPUs but their methods are wrong. They don't get the idea that it is useless for a beginner board if it is hard to get, pricey, and has poor support and few examples.

Other than that, I wanted to get STM discovery boards since they are cheap and a good start in ARM MCUs after spending time using PICs and Arduinos.

The biggest point in getting a dev-board is not to actually set you up for starting into the chip, it's more to do with the code examples that usually comes prepackaged with the dev-board.
Unfortunately for me... element14 seems to stock 'old version' and buying from microchip direct is a bit putting-off with the high shipping cost... so I sometimes ended up with a dev-board that's designed and deployed with codes based on very very very old sets of environment (in the case of PIC, old version of MPLAB and old coding-style/old MLAs)

[VEGETA]

Luminax

Yes you are right, but I don't really know a good and widespread PIC board unlike Arduino boards. Thus I try to use it myself for more learning.

[Luminax]

I believe their mainstay is Explorer 16 Board. If you look into Microchip MLA, there's Explorer 16, PIC18 Plug-In-Modules(PIM) and starter kits, etc. Buying a starter kit/demo board/development board to match a readily available library of application is one way of going about it.

Come to think of it... maybe I should make some demo board... hmmmmm..... profit $$ ?? 

[technix]

I believe their mainstay is Explorer 16 Board. If you look into Microchip MLA, there's Explorer 16, PIC18 Plug-In-Modules(PIM) and starter kits, etc. Buying a starter kit/demo board/development board to match a readily available library of application is one way of going about it.

Come to think of it... maybe I should make some demo board... hmmmmm..... profit $$ ?? 

Might as well be. I will look into those too.

[ptricks]

One comment about the 8051.
Yes it is old, really old, but.....
The core of the 8051 is still used in lots of new products mainly because it is so well understood and easy to implement, it is a true controller not so much a processor as the newer chips like pic, avr . Even the space shuttles used them for control.
The popular ESP8266 wifi module uses an 8051 core for the controller .
Learning the 8051 is easy and I wouldn't toss it aside as it is a very capable little chip that doesn't require much to use. I like the RX variety that have built in serial bootloaders, I think they were made by philips.

[TJ232]

The popular ESP8266 wifi module uses an 8051 core for the controller .

Isn't it a Tensilica LX106?

Yes, it is a 32-bit RISC CPU: Tensilica Xtensa L106 running at 80 MHz.