Need a new MCU board, halp!

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robodude666
 
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Joined: Sun Mar 28, 2010 12:12 am

Need a new MCU board, halp!

Post by robodude666 »

Hey guys,

A few months ago my AVR ISP mkII programmer went poof. I have been without the ability to play with my many AVRs for a while, and it's been lonely. I need help picking a new best friend.

I've been waiting the past.... who knows how many months for LeafLabs to release their Maple Mini, but every ETA I ask for results in a "should be a few more weeks." and I'm starting to look at other options

I've looked at the microBuilder LPC1343 board, and it's beautiful, but lacks GPIO, Flash, and RAM. The LPC176x series of MCUs would be perfect for me. I found the LPC1789 LPCXpresso board and it looks promising (and cheap!). Unfortunately, the board uses a code-limited IDE that's not available in a Mac OS X environment (bootcamp or VM aren't options). If anyone knows whether the board can be used with YAGARTO + OpenOCD that'd be great to know, plus any links/documentation would be great too.

Beyond this LPCXpresso board, I don't know what else I could get. I have a Megavore from StackFoundry, and love it, but it's useless without a PDI programmer. I'm not throwing another $40 for another AVRISPmkII since I'd like an ARM with more oomph.

For reference, I'm working on a project involving a QVGA LCD. While I'm getting great results with AVRs, I'd like to move from a 8-bit to 16-bit interface and a faster clockrate; like rossum, I'm not finding 8-bit to yield the performance I'm looking for.

Does anyone have any recommendations on ARM Cortex-M3 boards? I'm looking for something with 128KB+ flash, 32KB+ RAM, at least ~64 GPIO with a minimum of 1x 16-bit and 1x 8-bit contiguous pins. One or more SPI interfaces, that don't interfere with the previously mentioned ports. Preferably something with a USB Bootloader, though a cheap JTAG programmer could also be an option. Compatibility with YAGARTO/OpenOCD and Mac OS X is a must. I've honestly looked at about every LPC and STM32 board I could find, though I'm sure I'm missing something. I have a limited "college student" budget, otherwise I'd just buy about every board I see and test them out.

Cheers,
-robodude666

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zener
 
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Joined: Sat Feb 21, 2009 2:38 am

Re: Need a new MCU board, halp!

Post by zener »

Stellaris?

http://search.digikey.com/scripts/DkSea ... &k=LM3S811

Sorry that's the best idea I can think of.

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