DonsDeals Blog: What Development Board to Use?

What Development Board to Use?

posted Feb 1st 2011 9:30am by James Munns
filed under: parts

Here at Hackaday, we see microcontroller based projects in all states of completion. Sometimes it makes the most sense to design systems from the ground up, and other times when simplicity or a quick project completion is desired, pre-built system boards are a better choice. We have compiled a list of boards that we commonly see in your submitted projects, split up by price range and with a little detail for reference.

After reading our list, sound off in the comments or on this forum post, and we may include your board in a follow-up guide at a later date. We will also be giving away 10 Hackaday stickers to the most insightful, the most original, and most useful advice given on the forum, so if you haven’t registered yet, now would be a perfect time. Winners of the sticker giveaway will be selected from the forum thread, and the final decision for prizes will be judged by the wit and whim of the Hackaday writing team. More prize details to follow in the thread. Read on for our guide based on past project submissions.

The Cheap ($0-$50):

When it comes to cheap boards, users can expect a simple breakout board, usually with some debugging facilities and minimal extra components. These boards tend to be aimed at hobbyists and the education crowd rather than companies who can afford full featured development setups for their engineers. Unfortunately, boards that come directly from manufacturers tend to have locked down or overly simplified IDEs or debugging software, though low price points often inspire the open source communities to write their own to take advantage of all the features.

TI’s MSP430 Launchpad: Coming in at $4.30, TI’s Launchpad board is definitely a bargain. For your money, you get a set of 16-bit MSP430 processors, a mini-USB debugger and programming interface, and a set of Windows IDEs to choose from. Not much more to write home about, but we have featured a number of projects with this family of microcontrollers running the show.
STMicroelectronic’s Discovery: Costing you a paltry $11.85, This 32-bit ARM processor may be one of the best performance to cost values. Similar to the Launchpad, the Discovery has a mini-USB interface, a breakaway programmer and debugger, and a few locked down IDEs to select. For students or professionals looking for experience with the ARM architecture, this Cortex-M3 based system would be a great place to start.
The Arduino Family: Needing no introduction, these 8-bit AVR based systems have been displayed by us numerous times. Due to an open source hardware and software design, these boards are available for as low as $20 or so for Arduino Compatable clones, or any price range up depending on included peripherals. Because of the simple IDE and coding environment familiar to anyone familiar with C, C++, or Java, the Arduino is a common choice for beginners, non-engineering types, and professionals alike.

Mid-Range Boards ($50-$150):

For a little more money, more can be expected from a development board. Often featuring higher I/O pin counts, more complex interfaces such as host USB ports, Ethernet, or Video-Out, these boards are a great place for a little computational and functional muscle. However, with a higher cost, it is more difficult to just throw one of these boards at any one-off project. More costly boards are often supported better as well, because they are used by engineers who will decide on important purchasing decisions. This area is also a transition area from more hardy microcontroller type boards into the more powerful microprocessor type systems (such as shifting from the Cortex-M to the Cortex-A series of ARM processors).

The Arduino Mega: For all the same reasons as the original Arduino, the Arduino Mega has its place in a prototyping or development environment. For a bit more money than the original, extra code space, processing power, and I/O pins are gained, with the same comfortable, familiar, and similar development tools. The Arduino Mega runs at $65, which makes for a costly 8-bit system.
The Chumby Hacking Board: An interesting example of a product going from production to prototyping as an afterthought, this board is based on the guts of the Chumby One, featuring a 32-bit Freescale i.MX ARM processor at 454 MHz. This system has video out, as well as a trio of USB ports for all the peripherals you can find or write your own drivers for. The Chumby Hacking board clocks in at a reasonable $90 or so, though supplies seem to be dwindling, so act fast if interested.
The Original BeagleBoard: At the top of the price range, the BeagleBoard (Revision C4) features a 600 MHz Cortex-A8 ARM processor capable of running a number of Linux systems, including Angstrom and Ubuntu. Designed to interface with cool toys like touchscreens, this board also features a powerful DSP chip for crunching numbers, as well as processing video and sound. For a newly discounted rate of $125, this compact powerhouse could be yours.

The Upper Crust ($150+)

At this price range, these boards often contain ARM processors from the Cortex-A series, and have more in common with high-end smartphones than the microcontrollers usually seen on Hackaday and in day-to-day life. Boards like these are a real investment, and often cost and perform similar to many older or low-end PCs and netbooks at a considerably more efficient performance to power use ratio in most cases. These boards tend to run Linux-based operating systems, including Android as well as others.

The BeagleBoard xM: Coming in at just around $150, this big brother to the first BeagleBoard adds parts such as onboard Ethernet, an additional 2 USB ports, and a bump to a 1 GHz processor. Although the MSRP is listed at $149, a high demand has pushed the cost well above that at places where stocks are even available. Because of a strong similarity to the original BeagleBoard, the existing community is strong, and full of examples and guides to get the board going
The PandaBoard: With features as far away from an 8-bit microcontroller as imaginable, this board comes dressed to the nines featuring a dual-core 1 GHz processor capable of handling 1080P video stream. We realize this is probably out of the ballpark of just about any “hack” level project at $174, but we know there are some engineers out there very excited to see this.

In Summary:

We know that brand and experience preference can be a strong motivator, so be productive with your advice and sound off in our forum with your picks for our follow-up post(s). We will do our best to wrap up all the information you provide into a more definitive, and hopefully even more informative guide for beginners and professionals alike.

tagged: Atmel, development, microcontroller, proto, STMicro, ti

Reader Comments

I always use my own board for AVR development. For STM32 I use the Discovery.

Arduino fans, where are thou?

Posted at 9:37 am on Feb 1st, 2011 by mi6_x3m

Econotag:

http://www.redwirellc.com/store/node/1

$55
Open hardware
802.15.4 wireless
ARM7
built-in bootloader (no extra hardware needed)
onboard JTAG (openocd support)
96kB RAM (used for execution, leftover is for data)
128kB Flash
all the usual MCU stuff (ADCs, timers, SPI, etc.. etc..)
Fully supported in Contiki

Posted at 9:37 am on Feb 1st, 2011 by Mariano Alvira

I personally use this one: http://starterkit.ru/html/index.php?name=shop&op=view&id=2

The price is about 200 bucks, it has AT91SAM, Xilinx FPGA, lots of onboard goodies and linux in there.

Posted at 9:51 am on Feb 1st, 2011 by Necromant

what about teensy?

Posted at 9:54 am on Feb 1st, 2011 by loki233

Being accustomed to the PIC microcontrollers, i’ve found the easyPIC boards to be very usefull. $139 at http://www.mikroe.com
I’m thinking about picking up an avr version too. They have them for most major microcontrollers.

Posted at 9:55 am on Feb 1st, 2011 by Thioden

There is Leaf Maple – an affordable and powerful MCU board:

http://leaflabs.com/devices/maple/

Posted at 10:09 am on Feb 1st, 2011 by artfwo

No mention of Parallax?!

http://www.parallax.com/

They’re a bit pricey, but their BASIC Stamp educational kits are the best I’ve seen for beginners. Awesome instructions and projects to learn from.
They also offer a couple other microcontrollers that I haven’t messed around with yet.

Posted at 10:17 am on Feb 1st, 2011 by ringzhz

You left out the Gumstix http://www.gumstix.com/
These have been very popular and have lots of community support.

Posted at 10:25 am on Feb 1st, 2011 by lwatcdr

I like the Arduino. It comes in lots of flavors and they’re available all over the place.

Posted at 10:37 am on Feb 1st, 2011 by Dino

I’m enjoying working with the mbed:

“This mbed Microcontroller is based on the NXP LPC1768 with an ARM Cortex-M3 Core running at 96MHz, 512KB FLASH, 64KB RAM and lots of interfaces including Ethernet, USB Device and Host, CAN, SPI, I2C and other I/O”

About $65. Built-in Ethernet (including MySQL connection libraries and and http server) makes it a pretty sweet little dev board.

Posted at 10:38 am on Feb 1st, 2011 by Kevin Gunn

I have always spun my on dev boards.

Old School still rulez!!!

Posted at 10:38 am on Feb 1st, 2011 by DerAxeman

on = own

Posted at 10:38 am on Feb 1st, 2011 by DerAxeman

It all depends on what you want to do.
If you want to do something in real time stay away from anything that runs a multi-tasking os. Unless great pains are taken to get a real time kernel running then you’re better off with a FPGA or a micro-controller. When i say real time i have in mind something that requires a fast control loop with feedback.

If you want connectivity, flexibility, and ease of development and the task you want to accomplish is CPU intensive then get something with linux on it.

if your project spreads across both categories, get a micro or a FPGA for your real time stuff and a upper crust linux running computer to do high level control. running python, talking to a webcam via v4l streaming it over wifi and communicating with a embedded 8-bt device driving your motors over usb serial is pretty nice.

Posted at 10:39 am on Feb 1st, 2011 by acamilo

Bravo HAD for this article, I now have something to point friends to who ask me about getting started with programming microcontrollers. Thanks!

- Robot

Posted at 10:41 am on Feb 1st, 2011 by Robot

I use these: http://www.voti.nl/dwarf/ – cheap, easy, and fun.

Posted at 10:41 am on Feb 1st, 2011 by Alex

CPUStick!

http://www.cpustick.com/

Posted at 10:42 am on Feb 1st, 2011 by osgeld

Or, if you don’t have a bunch of money to spend on a dev board, sample the micros for free, etch your own board, and LEARN SOMETHING in the process!!!

Posted at 10:43 am on Feb 1st, 2011 by Jake

yeah – ‘nother vote for the leaf maple. guess it’s easy to overlook since there are so many platforms out there. I’ve used the at90usb, too.

Posted at 10:54 am on Feb 1st, 2011 by signal7

you managed to leave out microchip completely…ive had a picdem2 plus for 7 years now and still works a treat

Posted at 10:59 am on Feb 1st, 2011 by steaky

LPCXpresso with LPC1768. Same chip as on the mbed, but you dont have to use their environment. Only $27 dollars! Also includes JTAG programmer/debugger that works with LPC’s Cortex M0′s and M3′s.

Posted at 11:02 am on Feb 1st, 2011 by stu

“etch your own board, and LEARN SOMETHING in the process!!!”

Yes, because like a chef, you don’t really know anything about cooking unless you raised your own cows and made your own pots and pans, etc.

Let me guess, your dad or big brother threw you in the deep end and said “Swim or your going to drown!”

BTW: I also was surprised to see no mention of Propellers. Eight core dev board for $50 hmmmmmm.

Posted at 11:08 am on Feb 1st, 2011 by Mark

Btw, homemade stuff usually rocks most.

Posted at 11:09 am on Feb 1st, 2011 by Necromant

Another vote for the mbed. http://mbed.org/

It’s incredibly powerful for it’s price, simple to get up to speed on (If you’ve ever used C or C++) works cross platform. And has an active helpful community always posting and sharing code.

For $59.00 you get built in ethernet, a real-time clock, tons of multipurpose pins, reading/writing to Flash as an IO stream, Multiple Serial, SPI, I2C. 100 MHz ARM to work with. Even a proper analog out (not PWM).

And still costs less than an Arduino + Ethernet shield.

Posted at 11:12 am on Feb 1st, 2011 by Steve Hoefer

I use cypress chips because I’m a simpleton and don’t like messing with crystals and interface chips, pullup and pulldown resistors, and I like to dynamically reconfigure analog and digital resources while the chip is running. I like the psoc EVal 1 board, but they’ve temporarily pulled it off the web. I’ve built temp sensors, bluetooth remote control cars, bike rpm sensors, HID keyboards/joysticks, servo controllers, and even a midi device with the PSoC family. My favorite board is the world tour kit CY3121 that you can get for free if you go to a seminar to learn how to use one. This board has 4 different psoc chips on it: one USB, one capsense, one with a 2 axis tilt sensor, and one with a 7 seg display. They are tied together with an I2C bus. For code demonstration purposes, it is easy to test with. My next kit will be CY8CKIT-001 will allows use of all three psoc chip families. The development environment is free. You pay for your compiler license if you want to use a high compression C compiler. Assembly language is free. I’d never use a micro controller before psoc. I picked up a kit that someone left behind and learned it in a couple months. I’ve been using them on and off for 3 years now.

Posted at 11:16 am on Feb 1st, 2011 by Orob

From my viewpoint it’s hard to beat the Renesas RX62N controller demo board, which costs under $100. The board includes a 100 MHz 32 bit controller with DMA, 9 DSP instructions, 256K flash RAM, onboard SDRam Interface, Micro SD card slot, 10/100Mbps Ethernet Controller, USB 2.0 Host/OTG, serial port, CAN bus module, AD & DA converters, CRC Calculator, microphone, speaker, audio amp, temp sensor via I2C, 3-axis accelerometer, 96 x 64-pixel white LED backlit graphics LCD (allowing RDK connection via the SPI bus), intergrated debugger, and tons of software, plus sample projects. It’s hard to beat what this package has built-in.

Posted at 11:19 am on Feb 1st, 2011 by James

I am very fond of the FEZ Domino and netduino(plus) boards for:

1) Relatively low cost at $35-$50
2) High-level functionality (USB Host, Filesystem, OneWire, etc)
3) Very, very, very good and *not* crippled IDE (MS Visual Studio Express Edition) with debugger

Using this board for rapid prototyping high-level tasks and to control MSP430′s for realtime work (e.g. driving stepper motors) is a killer combination.

Posted at 11:22 am on Feb 1st, 2011 by CircuitPeople

I generally take a PIC 18, stick it in a breadboard, hook 5 wires to a PICKit2, and go.

But what I’d really like to see is a choice of low-cost (<$10) ARM-on-a-DIP boards. ARMs have lots of pins, but how about putting them on a variety of DIPs (from 14 pin up to 64) with important pins brought out. This lets you use the same development tools across a range of size and functionality. And it's breadboard-friendly.

Posted at 11:26 am on Feb 1st, 2011 by Bob

I use Arduinos but not Arduinos– there are so many more useful compatible boards for cheaper, plus it’s easy to make your own. The simple interfacing makes them straightforward if they’re powerful enough for your project. I know hackaday folks love to hate on Arduino, but for most people– not professional developers or engineers– setting up a toolchain is a major pain. Lots of Arduino-compatible boards listed here:
https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AsCUiP6WbJIvcG8xalA3QVdmb3JVT0ptWE9VNC02WEE&hl=en#gid=0

Posted at 11:34 am on Feb 1st, 2011 by salsaman

I never liked programming before i got my arduino duemilanove i love it.

Posted at 11:38 am on Feb 1st, 2011 by hippi97

whats up with pretending to forget about major player attitude, really?

Posted at 11:47 am on Feb 1st, 2011 by therian

no mention of Propellers/Basic Stamp? while im not a huge fan, I did enjoy using them for awhile. i just can’t believe they aren’t mentioned since they are among the most popular and widely used. heck, you can go pick one up at radioshack. this article doesn’t seem to be complete.

Posted at 11:49 am on Feb 1st, 2011 by walt

I’ve used this board http://www.awce.com/gpmpu40.htm (bare board is $14.95, qty 1) for years when I want something permanent. I just pick my (DIP) microcontroller, solder a few wires and it’s ready to go.
Plus, it allows easy access to every microcontroller pin and it includes an RS232 level converter and DB9 jack footprint.

Posted at 11:51 am on Feb 1st, 2011 by Ag Primatic

“setting up a toolchain is a major pain”

http://mc1322x.devl.org/toolchain.md

which amounts to downloading a executable file from Codesourcery, running it, then clicking “next” a few times.

Posted at 12:04 pm on Feb 1st, 2011 by Mar

Mar, thanks for the link. Proper IDE’s are hard to use for people who have never used them– your transparent may be most people’s opaque. Arduino’s IDE and bootloader get folks over the hump.

Posted at 12:12 pm on Feb 1st, 2011 by salsaman

I will be adding a development board for LM3S series parts to the pile to choose from in a few weeks. Going to be a good alternative from the .NET stuff, a bit cheaper for the same functions.

Posted at 12:25 pm on Feb 1st, 2011 by Brian

I didn’t know you wanted an IDE too. It’s true, the IDE is a little harder, but not much:

http://mc1322x.devl.org/eclipse.md

The second half is setting up eclipse. So that’s download and install eclipse, then set up a few menus.

The first half is for OpenOCD (debugger). That _is_ often very annoying. But as far as I know Arduino doesn’t address that either.

Also, I’m not trying to hate on Arduino here — I know those guys and they do good work. Use it, love it, whatever; do things in a way that works for you. But you said setting up a toolchain is a major pain for most people and I’m saying that for many MCUs that simply isn’t true.

Posted at 12:30 pm on Feb 1st, 2011 by Mar

For a while I’m using this great board… Considering peripherals on board it is a really fair deal.
http://www.mikroe.com/eng/products/view/573/multimedia-board-for-pic32mx7/

Posted at 12:38 pm on Feb 1st, 2011 by Munze

NetBurner has some great processor modules. Just giving a heads up that I am an Engineer for the company but I am also a daily reader of hack-a-day. The $59(low quantity) SB70LC can handle 90mbit/s UDP data throughput while consuming less then 1 watt, most of that power is consumed by the Ethernet PHY. $99 dev-kit includes a hardware module, a development board and full software suite. Software package includes RTOS, full network stack, file system, 100+ examples, Eclipse based IDE, application updating and debugging over Ethernet. Though we are not a fully open platform like the popular boards on this site, we do still provide the source code with the basic development kit.

Posted at 12:41 pm on Feb 1st, 2011 by Larry

CUI32 – http://www.sparkfun.com/products/9645 – runs StickOS BASIC by default (extremely easy to get started with since the compiler is on-board, and the “IDE” is simply any terminal program (HyperTerminal, TeraTerm, ZTerm on OSX, etc.) … but not limiting for advanced projects either, since it ships with the standard Microchip bootloader installed as well (no need for a programmer). Also, MPLAB X is in beta now, soon there’ll be a real cross-platform solution for PIC-based boards!

Posted at 1:02 pm on Feb 1st, 2011 by Dan

All good boards (a few were left out but I understand you wanted to keep the article under a million words long) but I have to throw my hat in with the Arduino crowd. I teach analog and digital electronics to non-technicians and the Open Hardware/Creative Commons ideology just works. Every student can take a dev board & parts home, d/l compilers and sample code then create/load their own sketches. My students have come in with ungodly awesome projects they “found on the Internet” for the Arduino. I guess it is because the Arduino is not “scary” and even little kids can have fun with them. Popularity counts and I love what the Arduino has done for invigorating an interest in electronics. Just my two cents….

Posted at 1:11 pm on Feb 1st, 2011 by qhent

For my money you can’t beat the AVR SKT600. With the 64QFP socket daughter board you can develop with just about any of the AVR series chips. It can be used as an ISP programmer for your own custom boards and it can be used as a RS-232 to TTL converter for any project. It is a bit expensive, but the free development tools and support for AVR makes up for it.

Posted at 1:32 pm on Feb 1st, 2011 by Luke

ZPUino is a softcore SoC opensource being developed by me, and it’s currently in an Alpha stage. It’s meant to be implemented on any FPGA and to use same IDE and Libraries as the popular Arduino platform.

You can see more details here:

http://www.alvie.com/zpuino/about.html

Posted at 1:32 pm on Feb 1st, 2011 by Alvaro

Cheap as dirt at90usb162 devboard: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/UKEY-AVR-At90usb162-8-MHz-/190497537541?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2c5a89be05#ht_500wt_1156

(conditions look a bit dodgy, though)

Posted at 1:34 pm on Feb 1st, 2011 by Inoop

I second the Mikroe dev board:
http://www.mikroe.com/eng/products/view/297/easypic6-development-system/

Posted at 1:45 pm on Feb 1st, 2011 by eecs

If you’re looking for a great pic board you should definatly try a North Micro board

http://www.northmicro.com/

it’s expandable too with an LCD/Keypad board, or a network board thats compatible with Microchips network stack

Posted at 1:52 pm on Feb 1st, 2011 by Andy

@mi6_x3m I bought a discovery and keep intending to use it, but I found the IDEs available are difficult to use and documentation is scattered.

I end up using the arduino because it’s the devil I know.

I wish someone would put together an open source, easy to use IDE for the discovery board that’s as simple as the Arduino IDE. I think I paid $10 for it and it seems like a great little dev board.

Anyone have a decent link to a Discovery for dummies tutorial (aka discovery for people who don’t have time to do any research for hobby projects.)

Posted at 2:06 pm on Feb 1st, 2011 by bunedoggle

Evalbot? Or is everybody still waiting for theirs?

Posted at 2:18 pm on Feb 1st, 2011 by dex

Great post, but missing a lot (and mostly covered in the comments).

I hope you guys make a revised version of this post.

The stm32 discovery was new to me. I am most used to ARM (v7) dev so that is just what I’m looking for!

Posted at 2:23 pm on Feb 1st, 2011 by Gdogg

I second the RX62N board (especially as it has been given free to me, including a Wifi module). Pity that the C compiler (HEW) is not free and limited after a certain time period. Thankfully a good alternative in the form of GNU RX has been given by Renesas.

I am also very fond of my Terasic Altera DE1 board. Great set of periphals and quartus is a pretty stable platform (with a free UP library).

I am currently waiting for my Pandaboard after having used the beagleboard (C4 and XM). I feel quite a collector, I love dev boards.

Anyone suggestions for wireless power devkits?

Posted at 2:30 pm on Feb 1st, 2011 by eelco

i think this board/kit is pretty awesome
http://www.technexion.com/index.php/development-kits/thunderpack
i haven’t used it but it looks comparable to beagle board

has anyone here used this? maybe i should ask in forums

Posted at 2:37 pm on Feb 1st, 2011 by zool

I’ve recently started using these stackable AVR protoboards: http://www.protostack.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=1_20 and they rock.

Posted at 2:43 pm on Feb 1st, 2011 by Simon

By the way, I’m currently working with a group of guys at our new board for robotic needs. It has an atmega128 with an FPGA (Xilinx spartan) on the memory bus, configured via master serial. AVR will be running a modded forth version (Take that arduino lovers) and upload config to FPGA from eeprom (currently up to 4 i2c eeprom chips can be soldered). We already have the pcb, but I haven’t yet written all the soft.

Posted at 2:48 pm on Feb 1st, 2011 by Necromant

I spent a long time building my own boards and using PIC, but my creativity and productivity exploded when I started using the Arduino (which I fought for years).

However, comparing these boards seems like comparing a big fruit basket. Some days you want ARM architecture/speed and peripherals. Other days you want the libraries and huge amount of projects for comparison that the Arduino offers.

Posted at 2:53 pm on Feb 1st, 2011 by Peter

This board really just came out and features pretty much everything you need:

(I think the dev team is busy releasing code because the site gets updates weekly now)

http://www.cheaptronics.nl/uboard/10545-uboard-microcontroller.html

Posted at 2:55 pm on Feb 1st, 2011 by avatar

I just wish there was a cheap blackfin dev board and IDE environment.
http://www.analog.com/en/embedded-processing-dsp/Blackfin/processors/Blackfin_architecture/fca.html
I need more DSP power to do opencv video processing – welcome to the future.
its only $8 for a BF592
http://www.analog.com/en/embedded-processing-dsp/blackfin/ADSP-BF592/processors/product.html

Posted at 3:01 pm on Feb 1st, 2011 by Marks

I am one of the lucky guys to have received the evalbot. However, I am slightly intimidated by the tooling. Arduino, TI launchpad and PIC are so much more compact.

I hate having to adjust tens of files to achieve a blinking LED.

The hardware is great, however, the tools are absolutely not idiot proof. Even a environment like Quartus is more comprehensible.

Posted at 3:03 pm on Feb 1st, 2011 by eelco

TP-LINK TL-MR3420
$60
400MHz, 32MB ram
USB host
1Gbit
Wifi N 300Mbs
Linux

TP-Link TL-MR3420
$40
400MHz, 32MB ram
USB host
100Mbit
Wifi N 300Mbs
Linux

Posted at 3:03 pm on Feb 1st, 2011 by rasz

Uhm rasz, why do you make a post about a router?
Do you actually use it as a development board?

Posted at 3:28 pm on Feb 1st, 2011 by Whatnot

coridium

http://www.sparkfun.com/products/8183

I like it because it is basic and so am I. Also powerful and can do a lot in hardware. $49.95 can be programmed from usb and accepts 7-12v on top of usb power and ARM7 CPU running at 60 Mhz

Posted at 3:46 pm on Feb 1st, 2011 by hyte

I will use anything that is cheap and doesn’t have an Eclipse based IDE only. Those appear to be high standards, because it seems to rule out just about anything currently…

It’s simply unusable. I have no idea how people use those programs without getting swarms of Null exceptions everywhere. Literally

And don’t get me started on Atmel. No documentation at all; it seems to be the new rage

Posted at 3:51 pm on Feb 1st, 2011 by Jeppe Johansen

you could have mentioned at least ONE of parrallax’s boards. i was expecting to see propeller mentioned in the mid-range section.

Posted at 4:02 pm on Feb 1st, 2011 by acomputerdog

Picaxe is a great entry level platform. $25 for the USB programming cable, $3 for the 08M, and programming in BASIC. No programming hardware needed, no external clock, with a breadboard, power supply, and a few resistors you can be up an running in a few hours…..

Posted at 4:38 pm on Feb 1st, 2011 by Joe Bonasses

@Whatnot:

Depending on what you want to do a consumer router can be an excellent platform. It comes with a proper operating system and a huge amount of software packages, it is extendable via USB and UART, and the question of how to interface the project with your PC is already answered (Ethernet/WiFi/3F). Power consumption is usually also quite low. You may still need an additional microcontroller for some things but most of the software can just be developed in C/C++ for Linux, using all those nice libraries.

Posted at 4:48 pm on Feb 1st, 2011 by Karl Schloser

I use Amicus18 and Ti Launchpad. Amicus board It´s a great development board based on Pic 18F25K20 and the development environment is AMICUS IDE(free version of Proton IDE).

http://www.myamicus.co.uk/

Posted at 5:34 pm on Feb 1st, 2011 by H3LIO

Don’t forget microchip, which has two development sets, both $69 with a PICKIT3 – one [debug express] has a has a PIC18F45k20, 8 LEDs, a switch and a POT, and comes with lesson plans on C programming, and the other has a PIC16F1937 with a 40 segment LCD, POT, pushbutton, LEDs,
32KHz crystal, etc and both have prototyping areas. and when you outgrow them, and are ready to roll you own circuits, you still have the PICKIT3 programmer/debugger.

Posted at 5:35 pm on Feb 1st, 2011 by Karl

Sounds like there are a lot of favorites but I’ll throw out another thumbs up for the Teensy. http://www.pjrc.com/teensy/ . Works great in the Arduino environment and has excellent support from its creator. Compared to an Arduino it is smaller, cheaper, has more pins (lots more on the ++), does more (usb devices), easy to use on 3.3v and is breadboard friendly.

Posted at 5:35 pm on Feb 1st, 2011 by JLS

Yes, I used Asus wl500g as a dev platform before.
Even Chumby sounds good as a dev platform.
I eman, why pay almost $100 for *duino crap when you can have proper Linux computer?

Posted at 5:47 pm on Feb 1st, 2011 by rasz

Shout out to the OOPIC as both my first intro to hardware development and Object Oriented Programing.

For now the Arduino is the right size for my hobby needs.

Posted at 5:58 pm on Feb 1st, 2011 by Justin

@Jeppe Johansen

Here is the documentation page for the Atmega328:
http://www.atmel.com/dyn/products/product_docs.asp?category_id=163&family_id=607&subfamily_id=760&part_id=4720

There is a 560 page document about the chip and 50 or more app notes. No documentation at all?

Also, I use Eclipse for 8 hours a day for my job and have no problems. I have had it crash, but I would guess it is less than once a month.

If you can’t find documentation, a google search will help you. If you can’t get Eclipse working, you should ask people because it is a decent IDE. The text editor is worlds better than the arduino and most other IDEs I’ve tried.

Posted at 6:04 pm on Feb 1st, 2011 by John Smith

@rasz

Check your power usage. Small microcontrollers are good when you need lot of them (in different places).

Posted at 6:18 pm on Feb 1st, 2011 by Kris Lee

@John Smith
Well, that’s the old AVR. Simple 8bit stuff. Well documented. Good simple tools

But all their new stuff. AVR32 is okay documented on a hardware level. On paper it’s a really great chip. It’s everything that ARM should have become

But I just shelled out what in the end amounted to 150 USD on a UC3L-EK. It took me 8 hours to even find a schematic. And I still haven’t found a way to dump a program into the processor. And their older development kits don’t seem a whole lot more documented

I wish the manufacturers would learn something! We have this great new line of chips. STM32, AVR32, RX62N, MSP430, and so on. But they all failed at producing some good development platforms. Hobbyists like me just want a simple way to load a program onto it. Debugging would be nice, but they just can’t figure out how to add this apparently…

Posted at 6:27 pm on Feb 1st, 2011 by Jeppe Johansen

I think that some of the propeller boards should also be mentioned, they are what I use, and are more powerful and the same price as some of the ones mentioned.

Posted at 6:50 pm on Feb 1st, 2011 by Adam

@Jeppe Johnsen

“It took me 8 hours to even find a schematic.”

Here’s how to do it in less than a minute.

Google UC3L-EK. Click on the first link. Click on the link that says Documents. Click on the link that says schematic.

Posted at 7:22 pm on Feb 1st, 2011 by John Smith

Hm….
Take a look at Supported Hardware list at
http://www.openwrt.org

There are A LOT excellent, easy-to-get, cheap and powerfull boards to work with. ARM and MIPS.
Forget about dev.boards, they are extremely overpriced.

Can you find something in dev. boards like D-Link DIR-320?:
240 MHz MIPS
32Mb RAM
16Mb FLASH
5ports 100Mbit Ethernet
1 WiFi
1 USB Host
Linux OS (i.e. no strange win-only IDEs, just gcc to write your code for board )
~$50 price.

OR, say, if you don’t need WiFi and USB host, you can find router for ~$20.

I spend a lot of time looking for cheap (really cheap, not for $100 ) dev. board with Ethernet port running Linux. I didn’t find anything comparable with small routers.

Posted at 7:55 pm on Feb 1st, 2011 by Stanson

I got a ET-STM32 board ( http://www.futurlec.com/ET-STM32_Stamp.shtml )….
It’s an arm cortex-m3 @72MHz / 90 MIPS
512k flash and 64k ram

for $25 !! Great price!

I’m currently working with a lot of boards ( Arm7 / Arm9 / Cortex-m3 / AVR32 ) and I liked that board and the MBED too.

I’m programming all that using eLua ( http://www.eluaproject.net ) and I think it’s great, specially for those starting now, since it’s quite easy to use.

Posted at 7:56 pm on Feb 1st, 2011 by Thiago Naves

I like these. There like the basic stamps but allot more power. Use them to run all my robots.

http://www.basicmicro.com/BasicATOM-Pro_c_48.html

Posted at 10:40 pm on Feb 1st, 2011 by MadCat

I work for SPLat, so I’m a little biased. However while our controllers aren’t as sexy as some listed here, there’s no internet nor ZigBee, the I/O pins are ready to hookup to relays or switches so you don’t need to provide any driver circuitry.
http://www.splatco.com/controllers.htm

What makes them compelling is the language. For example, “Input” returns the debounced state of an input. Cooperative multitasking of up to 32 tasks is provided, as is floating point math. Getting something running quickly is what they’re good at:
http://www.splatco.com/skb/3073.htm

Our last project was a shipyard painting/blasting facility where we had 4 networked controllers and a Modbus touch screen interface.

Posted at 10:56 pm on Feb 1st, 2011 by Richo

I’m a great fun of mikroe :)
Mikroe boards are big, but you get a bunch of things integrated on board….including programmer/debugger..so my choice is:
http://www.mikroe.com/eng/products/view/297/easypic6-development-system/

After finished develop firware you can always buy cheap PICready board and integrate it in your application.
http://www.mikroe.com/eng/products/view/305/pic-ready1-board/
Or if you need usb in your application:
http://www.mikroe.com/eng/products/view/631/startusb-for-pic/
P.S. They comes with fast bootloader.

And someone already mentioned PIC32… i think that it is a great MCU… i will try it as soon as i finish my current project…

Posted at 11:12 pm on Feb 1st, 2011 by MBear

No mention of the Axon MCu from Society Of Robots?

i see their ads posted all over this site

http://www.societyofrobots.com

Posted at 12:43 am on Feb 2nd, 2011 by aston

I feel left out again….

So Microchip has the microstick It is a 25 $ beast of a board.
http://www.microchip.com/stellent/idcplg?IdcService=SS_GET_PAGE&nodeId=1406&dDocName=en548414
Link for reference

Then for a 50$ or slightly less board….
Low pin count USB development kit , with programmer (40$ last i checked)

And if you want to go all out , there are the various PICDEM boards.

Pretty surprised these got left out completely. especially the Microstick its a nice board.

Posted at 2:56 am on Feb 2nd, 2011 by addidis

@Stanson: Damn straight! And if you want networking they’re the natural choice (or a Mini-ITX board for about the same outlay). But what do you do it you don’t want to have to wait for an OS to boot?

Posted at 3:02 am on Feb 2nd, 2011 by nes

I hate to do this but i agree with leaving out parralax. They have their nitch, but I think every one who has purchased a parallax board wishes they had known about arduino.

Arduino uses C (like virtually every thing else)
Parallax (granted im familiar with bs2 and before) uses basic .

Basic is great if you know it , like i do . But if you know nothing its only goin to make learning C C++ etc etc etc harder because the syntax is completely different. They are also more expensive then an arduino, Microstick or any other option listed here.

Learn basic you can use parallax

Learn C you can code Microchips , arduinos , pc games , you can even use arduino libraries on a PIC with minimal effort compared. Launchpad uses C too i believe.

Posted at 3:22 am on Feb 2nd, 2011 by addidis

Propeller USB
from GadgetGangster

comes with all you need: TV-out, Audio-out, MicroSD, USB, and 8Core-Multitasking.
50$

Posted at 3:24 am on Feb 2nd, 2011 by Philipp

I’ll have to second the boards from MikroE.
Bought the EasyPic5 (they’re one board revision futher by now). At it’s price, you won’t use it to permanently build the board into a project, but it’s been a *great* board for learning and trying out new things. Lots of add-on boards, on board lcd, lots of switches, breakout headers, all kind of pics are supported (about 160 right now), and a really great community on their forum.
Bought it without knowing much about electronics, and nothing about uCs, never regretted it…

Posted at 4:20 am on Feb 2nd, 2011 by Fozzy Vis

@nes: Mini-ITX means x86. x86 means heater eating an anomalous amount of amperes. So, it’s not the choice.

About boot… Really, I don’t wait for OS to boot, I just do not turn it off. :)

Meanwhile, if you think that some PIC or AVR with network interface inside or as additional chip will init normal TCP/IP stack, get address via DHCP and began to respond faster than router board – you are mistaken.

Of course, if you need some very reduced networking, or do not need it at all, small controllers will be nice. But in that case dev.board is not needed, breadboard will be enough to test your circuit and get ready for final PCB.

Posted at 7:12 am on Feb 2nd, 2011 by Stanson

Another plug for Parallax Propeller dev boards. These can be had for as little as $25 or so, up to about $150 for the fancy ones with a breadboard and other peripherals attached. They can be programmed in the native .spin language, or in assembly, basic, C, or even drag-and-drop blocks. Running at top speed, the Propeller is capable of up to 160 MIPS.

Posted at 7:33 am on Feb 2nd, 2011 by jeff-o

@nes
You dont have to wait for Linux boot. If you sacrifice the kernel you can just write your code in C, compile directly for the platform and flash directly to the board right after bootloader (you have all the hardware data like addresses modes mappings in openwrt header files) instead of flashing openwrt and saving your python script/universal ARM/MIPS/whatever binaries on the flash/usb pendrive.

Posted at 8:10 am on Feb 2nd, 2011 by rasz

I should mention the Junebug (http://www.blueroomelectronics.com/Junebug.htm) It’s a pickit 2 compatible programmer/debugger, with an on board pic 18f1320 you can program for testing out. (It’s hooked up to some charlieplexed LEDs, pots, and IR sensors.

Posted at 8:20 am on Feb 2nd, 2011 by Gdogg

A plug for the Nerd Kit. It consists of ATmega168, 20 x 4 LCD Module with backlight, breadboard, USB cable, other components, example programs and instructions. Cost is $79.

As a non-programmer, I put together the kit and was modifying programs in 4 hrs.

Great support also.

http://www.nerdkits.com/

Posted at 8:58 am on Feb 2nd, 2011 by Dave Fla

Curious why dev environments and programming languages were not mentioned in this post because they are intrinsically linked? Arduinos C, PIC Basic, Chumby Flash. What about Python, Javascript, .net(gasp) etc…?

Posted at 9:20 am on Feb 2nd, 2011 by Dave Fla

HaD has read my mind again. Minutes ago I was wondering to myself what tinkerer development platform I could get the most mileage out of. And now it’s time to RTFA.

Posted at 9:20 am on Feb 2nd, 2011 by Derek

yo uso pinguino!!
es una alternativa muy buena..

http://jpmandon.blogspot.com/

Posted at 9:26 am on Feb 2nd, 2011 by heberth

I CAN’T BELIEVE NOBODY HAS MENTIONED OLIMEX YET! They make some fantastic dev boards. I use their PIC32MX board and it works great!
http://www.olimex.com/dev/

Posted at 10:05 am on Feb 2nd, 2011 by Brennan

I bought a couple of Technologic Systems TS-7300 when someone was selling a bucketload on eBay for about $40 apiece. They aren’t normally cheap but I love these boards! It’s like two dev boards melded to one, one half 200MHz ARM9 with several components (ethernet, sd card, USB, etc) and one half Altera FPGA (another ethernet, sd card, serial ports, VGA). Lots of i/o, boots Linux off SD, easy to upload bitstreams via CPU to enable VGA (own dedicated 8MB RAM for video buffer), extra ethernet, com ports, etc. Much of the bitstream was open-sourced on opencores.org.

BeagleBoards are nice, esp. with that DSP, but don’t often see <$200 boards with CPU and FPGA.

Posted at 12:33 pm on Feb 2nd, 2011 by njrabit

Well, yes, microcontroller board is important.

What is more important is off-the-shelf add-ons and off-the-shelf libraries for add-ons. You cannot beat Arduino here – it has shields for everything you can think of, and free open source libraries for them.

Posted at 12:34 pm on Feb 2nd, 2011 by Konstantin

@Stanson: I only mention ITX as I replaced by OpenWRT running Belkin router with a 600MHz Via C3 running Debian about 6 months ago. Power draw is not significantly greater and I get about three times the CPU power and none of the limited memory headaches. An Atom ITX board can be had for about $60, less a DIMM and a PSU, but it’s 4W max for the CPU + about 20W for the chipset much of which can be disabled once you’ve got your OS running. I admit I never switch mine off either :)

@rasz: I never thought to try that but would be interested to give it a go. The thing is, I can’t imagine how a useful networking stack would work without an OS. A kernel with a smaller memory footprint which doesn’t need to be decompressed before it can start up would be good.

Posted at 4:15 pm on Feb 2nd, 2011 by nes

+1 for http://www.netduino.com/ which lets you tinker as well as implement high quality prototypes on Arduino priced and Arduino pin compatible hardware. Comes with professional, easy to use tools, and libraries. Developing in C# instead of C brings huge advantages in terms of code robustness.

Posted at 5:36 am on Feb 3rd, 2011 by tamberg

I use an STM32 stamp from ebay similar to ST discovery! I has 512kb flash,72mhz(overclocked to 128mhz) and a quick bootloader.price $30. The thing that matters the most is SIZE.

Posted at 6:17 am on Feb 3rd, 2011 by opcode

@opcode: Futurelec has that stamp module for $25. See http://www.futurlec.com/ET-STM32_Stamp.shtml

Posted at 6:32 am on Feb 3rd, 2011 by Bob

TI has the market on cheap dev boards for beginners, but if you’re looking to do some real prototyping and think the single processor might not fit the bill, Parallax has the best multi-processor chip on the market. USA USA!!! They are based in California and work closely with builders and the community to ensure their products are what we want and can use. http://www.parallax.com and look for propeller, it is their high-end multi-core beast!

Posted at 9:56 am on Feb 3rd, 2011 by Uber Cody

@tamberg

is “Arduino priced” a synonym for “at least 2x overpriced”? :)

Posted at 10:05 am on Feb 3rd, 2011 by rasz

Please check out:

LPCXpresso (from NXP)
mbed (from ARM)

I’m now using these for all my projects. Cheap and awesome!

Posted at 11:05 am on Feb 3rd, 2011 by Freak

My problem is that I don’t consider $30 LPCXpressos or $50 Arduinos to be “cheap”, when I normally use $1 to $5 PICs.

That said, I hate the PIC. The architecture is icky and I want to use C++ instead of C (for cleaner code and reusability, not for bloated code). ARM would be great.

If NXP sold target boards separately for the LPCXpresso, you could reuse the Link board for programming multiple targets. The target boards could sell for less than ~$15. Still more than I pay for a PIC, but it’s acceptable.

They could also sell different size boards. ARMs all come with dozens of pins, but I’d like to use the same toolchain even for smaller projects. Why not put a 48 pin ARM on a 14 pin DIP PCB and bring out the lines that a typical 14 pin MCU would provide?

Posted at 11:41 am on Feb 3rd, 2011 by Bob

ugh ARMs are 32bit CPU and not targetted to the same market that 8-bit hobby PICs are.

Posted at 7:09 pm on Feb 3rd, 2011 by Gdogg

There are ARM microcontrollers intended for embedded use, with Flash memory and a slew of on-chip peripherals. The chips are available for as little as $2.80 in single quantities. JTAG programmers can be had for the same price as PICkit 2s. And the options for software development are far superior (unless you’re a BASIC aficionado; I’m a software developer by trade, so I want C++ even for small projects).

So why not put an ARM on a DIP and use it?

Posted at 7:27 pm on Feb 3rd, 2011 by Bob

I was shocked to not see ANY Parallax Propeller based boards! I really think that they NEED to be on this list.

Posted at 10:04 pm on Feb 3rd, 2011 by Tim

I created my own customized development board based on AVR32. Hope you like it.

Posted at 7:36 am on Feb 4th, 2011 by Tolaemon

Here’s a review I made of the Vinculo board, an interesting arduino-inspired and USB host-capable development board.
http://embeddednewbie.blogspot.com/2011/02/vinculo-arduino-clone-with-usb-slave.html

Posted at 10:01 am on Feb 4th, 2011 by ZF

@Tolaemon, looks expensive(but really nice!). How much did it cost to produce?

Posted at 11:20 am on Feb 4th, 2011 by Jeppe Johansen

How sad that there isn’t even a mention of Parallax’s Propeller or Basic Stamp mentioned at all. Gadget Gangsters Propeller board at $50 is a great buy, and Parallax’s Professional Development Board is a little expensive at $150 but has a bunch of peripherals on it that you will need on a lot projects.

Posted at 5:54 pm on Feb 4th, 2011 by eod_punk

I used the microchip PIC32 starter kit on my LED cube project, there’s an ethernet and a usb version too. You can add an I/O interface board and lots of various “pictail” boards which add functionality, like memory, wireless, multimedia, GPS, etc… Maybe not the cheapest option, but I don’t think it’s bad for what you get.

http://www.microchip.com/stellent/idcplg?IdcService=SS_GET_PAGE&nodeId=2519&param=en535764&page=wwwdevPIC32BoardKits

Posted at 1:44 am on Feb 5th, 2011 by vespine

A hornets net stirred here for sure!
I suspect that it’s hard to write an article like this without missing several players. With their longevity in the industry, I’m surprised that Parallax was skipped. Pound for pound, you really can’t beat projects like Gadget Gangster’s Propeller Platform board. It’s the best $50.00 you can spend.

Posted at 8:18 am on Feb 5th, 2011 by Oldbitcollector

I found PSoC 3 first touch starter kit (49$) very helpful for one of my GSM modem interface Application. The kit has 8051 core based low power PSoC3 device with high precision analog peripherals. The kit also features
* USB device
* On board programmer
* battery operated low power design examples
* Capacitive Sensors for user interface and proximity sensing.
* Accelerometer
* placeholder for wireless communication etc..

http://www.cypress.com/?rID=38235

Posted at 11:41 pm on Feb 6th, 2011 by Vishnu

I’m with Joe Bonasses, the PICAXE is simply great! It is really, really cheap and can be used with the minimal technical knowledge. You can basically use it straight out of the box. It also plugs into other hardware really easily via the usual communication protocols (I2C, Serial, one-wire etc.). They also have a pretty decent simulator. You have to check it out. Also, what puts some people off the Arduino is the programming language. PICAXE is programmed in its own easy version of BASIC. OK, C is great, but many people just don’t know it, and don’t need to know it for their projects.
http://www.rev-ed.co.uk/picaxe/

Posted at 4:32 am on Feb 11th, 2011 by twopartepoxy

Arduino for ever ;)

Posted at 6:04 am on Feb 13th, 2011 by Hack

The Eridani is a new development board I just finished documenting. That is the thing I think is the most lacking in a lot of boards.

It is an ARM Cortex M3 USB OTG/HOST/DEV board with 32K/128K, and 29 usable GPIOs. It frankly rocks. Super easy to use peripheral library.

http://teholabs.com and http://teholabs.com/docs/eridani:overview for more info

Posted at 12:01 pm on Feb 14th, 2011 by Brian

There’s only two things I don’t like about Arduinos: the appalling documentation and the fact that it’s unlikely you’ll ever find a new one with all the bits soldered on properly. Once you’ve soldered all the bad joints up they are excellent tools for the novice and expert alike.

Posted at 5:46 am on Feb 16th, 2011 by wosser

People have mentioned Arduinos and other microcontrollers, mostly. But what if you want to play with bigger FPGAs?

If you want to try out Altera Cyclone IV – there is soon this board coming out: http://www.natami.net/hardware.htm

Posted at 4:17 pm on Feb 16th, 2011 by Jakob

Is there one that can host multiple USB devices, while pretending to be multiple slaves to another host? I’d love to work on something for handicapped gamers.

Posted at 12:36 am on Feb 17th, 2011 by NeoTechni

There are a number of pcbs (including my own) for the Propeller. The propeller supports simple Composite Video (3 resistors and pins) or VGA (8 resistors and pins).

CPM is running using the Propeller as a Z80 emulator. There is a Propeller ASC (an Arduino compatible pcb based on the Prop).

Checkout the very active forum for more info http://forums.parallax.com/forumdisplay.php?65-Propeller-Chip&order=desc

Posted at 9:34 pm on Feb 17th, 2011 by cluso99

Go there...
http://hackaday.com/2011/02/01/what-development-board-to-use/

I looked through all of the links in the Comments Here and Wow!:) There is allot of good info to help me get started in Learning How to Build what ever I want, from Project Boards. Thanks Guys for all of the Great info!:)

Don