mcu News - Page 46 of 53 - CNX Software

March 28, 2014March 28, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Low Cost Development Boards Giveaway: Raspberry Pi, BeagleBone Black, MicroZed, Minnowboard, and more

OpenSystems Media is organizing a giveaway of some development boards targeting hobbyists. They’ll have a draw for the boards at EELive in San Jose, at their booth #2009 on April 1-2, but if you can’t attend you can also get a change to win online. Here’s the list of board given away 2 Raspberry Pi Boards sponsored by Element14 2 BeagleBone Black Boards sponsored by Texas Instruments 2 Minnowboards sponsored by Intel 2 Gizmo Development Boards sponsored by Symmetry Microzed Board from Xilinx sponsored by Avnet Finboard Board from Analog Devices sponsored by Avnet 2 STMicroelectronics Nucleo Boards sponsored by Mouser You could also double your chances to win by tweeting the text below: I just entered to win a #DIY board from @embedded_mag from #EELive. Click here for your chance to #win http://bit.ly/EElivecontest #embedded I could not find any terms and conditions, so I’m not sure if the giveaway is […]

March 11, 2014March 28, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments

Texas Instruments Tiva C Series TM4C1294 Connected Launchpad Sells for $20

There are now many ultra low cost MCU development kit selling for $15 to $25 such as STMicro Discovery Board, but for this price, they’ll usually just feature the MCU, a micro USB, pin header, maybe and maybe some sensors, and they usually lack any form of connectivity, at least without extra hardware. With Tiva C Series TM4C129 Connect Launchpad, Texas Instruments brings a board that can be used for IoT application out of the box thanks to the addition of an Ethernet port. The board sells for just $19.99, which means you could easily make something like a connected 4-relay control system for about $25. Connected LaunchPad evaluation kit specifications: MCU – Texas Instruents TM4C1294NCPDT ARM Cortex-M4 @ 120MHz with floating point, 1MB Flash, 256KB SRAM, 6KB EEPROM, Integrated 10/100 Ethernet MAC+PHY, data protection hardware, 8x 32-bit timers, dual 12-bit 2MSPS ADCs, motion control PWMs, USB H/D/O, and many […]

February 18, 2014October 2, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 12 Comments

STMicro Unveils $10 mbed-enabled and Arduino Compatible Nucleo Development Boards

STMicro already announced a $24 NFC development kit a few days ago, and they’ve now announced new ultra low cost STM32 development boards. STMicro Nucleo development boards are based on different STM32 MCU based on ARM Cortex M0, M3 and M4, feature Arduino headers, and are supported by mbed platform. There are currently four boards available: NUCLEO-F401RE – Based on STM32F401RET6 ARM Cortex M4 MCU @ 84 MHz with 512KB flash memory, 96 KB SRAM NUCLEO-F030R8 – Based on STM32F030R8T6 ARM Cortex M0 MCU @ 48 MHz with 64KB flash memory, 8KB SRAM NUCLEO-F103RB – Based on STM32F103RBT6 ARM Cortex M3 MCU @ with 128KB flash memory, 20 KB SRAM NUCLEO-L152RE – Based on STM32L152RET6 ARM Cortex M3 MCU @ 32MHz with 512KB flash memory, 32KB SRAM All four boards share the following specifications: STM32 microcontroller with LQFP64 package Two types of extension resources Arduino Uno Revision 3 connectivity STMicroelectronics […]

December 2, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

Micro Python Brings Python to MCU Boards and Robots (Crowdfunding)

Micro Python is an implementation of the Python programming language, written from scratch and optimized to run on micro-controllers such as the ones based on ARM Cortex-M cores. Damien George, the developer, also designed the Micro Python board powered by STMicro STM32F405 Cortex M4 MCU for the purpose of running Micro Python. Even though in this project, the star of the show is not the board itself, as Micro Python will run on other platform once it’s open source, let’s have a look at the hardware specifications: MCU – STMicro STM32F405RG @ 168MHz with 1MB flash, 192KB RAM, and an FPU. External storage – Micro SD slot 30 general purpose I/O pins – 5 USARTs, 2SPIs, 2 I2C busses, 14 ADC pins, 2 DAC pins, 2CANs, and 4 servo ports with power. Built-in USB interface Misc – 4 LEDs, a user switch, a reset switch, a real-time clock, and a 3-axis […]

November 4, 2013November 4, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Silicon Labs Unveils EFM32 Zero Gecko MCU Family Based on ARM Cortex M0+

Silicon Labs, who bought Energy Micro earlier this year, has recently introduced a new family of 32-bit MCU based on ARM Cortex M0+ called EFM32 Zero Gecko, as well as the corresponding starter kit. These ultra low power MCUs (currently 16 products) are destined to be used in IoT applications such as mobile health and fitness products, smart watches, activity trackers, smart meters, security systems and wireless sensor nodes, as well as battery-less systems powered by harvested energy. The key features of this family include: ARM Cortex-M0+ core @ 24 MHz 4kb to 32 kB flash and 2kb to 4 kB RAM memory 17 to 37 GPIO Single 1.85–3.8 V power supply 5 Power modes Hardware AES (Some models only) -40° to 85 °C operation range Package options: QFN24, QFN32 and QFN48 EFM32ZG222F32, the Zero Gecko MCU with the most memory and features, has the following specifications: ARM Cortex-M0+ CPU […]

August 16, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

MCU Energy Efficiency Benchmark – Freescale KL02, Microchip PIC24, TI MSP430, and STMicro STM32L

Freescale has recently uploaded a video comparison the energy efficiency of several micro-controllers: Freescale Kinetis KL02, Texas Instruments MSP430, STMicro STM32L, and Microchip PIC24. Since it’s a Freescale video, we already know the winner, but the test they performed it still interesting, and it shows drastic performance differences between architectures. The used the following exact MCU for testing: Freescale MKL02Z32CAF4R – Cortex M0+ @ 48 MHz STMicro STM32L151RBT6 – Cortex M3 @ 32 MHz Microchip PIC24FJ128GA308 – 16-bit MCU @ 32 MHz Texas Instruments MSP430F5529 – 16-bit MCU @ 25 MHz Freescale did not really select tough competition such as NXP LPC800 Cortex M0+, but instead a Cortex M3 MCU, and older 16-bit MCUs. I don’t know if Microchip has a new generation of ultra low power 16-bit MCUs , but Texas Instruments, for example, launched MSP430 Wolverine MCUs at the end of last year. So this comparison may not be […]

August 13, 2013August 13, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Lantronix Unveils xPico Wi-Fi Module For the Internet of Things

With Texas Instruments SimpleLink Wi-Fi CC3000 and Qualcomm Atheros AR4100P embedded Wi-Fi processors that fully handle Wi-Fi internally, and transfer data to an MCU with an SPI interface, and solutions such as Electric Imp, there are already ways to add Wi-Fi at relatively low cost to appliances. There’s now another solution available on the market with Lantronix xPico Wi-Fi Module. Listed features and specification of xPico Wi-Fi: SoC – ARM Cortex M3 class processor with 1MB on-chip Flash and 128 KB SRAM Storage – SPI Flash storage Wireless LAN Interface IEEE 802.11 b/g and IEEE 802.11n (single stream) WLAN interface (2.4 GHz only) IEEE 802.11 d/h/i/j/k/w/r WPS 2.0 support u.FL connector for external antenna Serial Interface Two Serial CMOS Ports (3.3V, 5V tolerant) 300 to 921.6 Kbps Flow control XON/XOFF, RTS/CTS (SPort 1 only) Lantronix tunneling application (SPort 1 only) Host Interface – Dual Serial Port, SPI, USB 2.0 (device), […]

August 12, 2013October 12, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

$275 HackRF Open Source Software Defined Radio (SDR) Platform

HackRF is an open source hardware project to build a Software Defined Radio (SDR) supporting a frequency range between 30 MHz and 6GHz in both directions (Tx and Rx, half-duplex) with a maximum bandwidth of 20MHz. Jawbreaker (shown below) is a beta hardware that has been tested by several developers and beta testers, and applications such as Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB), Bluetooth monitoring, spectrum sensing, wireless microphones, AIS, FM radio, etc.. have already been ported to the platform. In order to lower the cost of the hardware, Michael Ossmann has launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund mass production. There seems to be many SDR enthusiasts as the campaign has already reached its funding target ($80,000) and received for over $300,000 in ledges. What is Software Defined Radio (SDR) and What Can it Be Used for? Before providing details about the hardware and software, it may be useful to provide some […]