Re: Programmer / Evaluation Board / Development Board
- From: Robert Adsett <sub2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 31 May 2008 20:16:20 -0400
In article <3770ee9c-4cb9-4433-b6de-f4d43633bad5
@y38g2000hsy.googlegroups.com>, Tomás Ó hÉilidhe says...
Are all of these the same thing?
No. Although the difference between a development board and an
evaluation board is at best fuzzy (and probably mostly in the minds of
the marketing department).
Some evaluation boards also act as programmers though.
Once I take a fancy to a particular microcontroller, the first thing
I'll want is a piece of hardware I can use for programming the chip.
Now given that I'm just one person working away in my bedroom with my
laptop, I'm not looking for some sort of industrial product the size
of a washing machine that can program 72 thousand chips every minute.
I'd want something small, no larger than the size of a CD dewel case,
that can hook up to my laptop via USB port / COM port / LPT port. It
shouldn't be too expensive either, but if it's pricey then I'll look
for a second-hand one on eBay.
Some micros (some arm variants notably) are programmable with a serial
port requiring at most a simple inexpensive adapter.
Nowadays, are there some microcontrollers that are purely for "use in
industry"? What I mean to say is: Is there some microcontrollers out
there for which you CANNOT get a small programmer board, or perhaps
one's for which the programmer board is ridiculously expensive?
Well there are certainly ones for which the development systems are
multiple thousands of dollars.
As I've mentioned here countless times, then only microcontroller I've
any experience with is the PIC16F684 because we used it in my college
course. I use the Pickit 1 to program it, which is a small programmer
board about the size of a credit card that connects to my PC via USB,
and the software I use for programming it is the PIC C compiler in
conjunction with MPLAB. The software was free, and I got the
development board for €10 through my college (which is about 15 US
dollars), so I'm pretty chuffed with that.
What do people call these "programmer boards" nowadays? I've heard
terms like "evaluation kit", "development board", but I don't know
what the difference is, if any.
I've also heard of something called "in-circuit programming" whereby
you can leave the chip in the circuit when you're programming it,
which I suppose is convenient. For my most recent project I simply
plucked the chip on and off the board, putting it into the Pickit 1 to
program and then putting it back in the circuit.
Rather difficult with SMT. In circuit programming can be as simple as
this http://www.aeolusdevelopment.com/Articles/InSystemProgramming.html
Disclaimer: That's my adapter.
What I'm extremely interested in, however, are the development boards
that let you actually debug the program, i.e. you can have the chip in
its circuit and, while the program is running, you can pause the
program and check the value of registers, and also single-step through
instructions. In my most recent project, there were times when a bug
in the program resulted in my circuit board doing absolutely nothing,
so I hadn't a clue what was going on. Some sort of debugger which
would have allowed me to single-step through the code and check
registers would have been greatly beneficial! What I ended up doing
was compiling the code for my PC and then single-stepping through it
to find the bug.
So anyway I'd like to ask something. For someone like me, who has an
interest in embedded systems as a hobby, who wants to be able to
program a microcontroller using a small USB-interface programmer, who
wants to be able to do in-circuit debugging, and who wants to work
with a microcontroller that has:
1) Plenty of IO pins (as much as 20 or even more)
2) A-to-D converter
3) Interrupts
4) Timers
What's the best microcontroller and programmer combo to go for? I'm
pretty happy with the Pickit1 but it can't program anything larger
than a 14-pin chip (or then again maybe it can but I'm not clued in).
Take a look at ARM (particularly Atemel and NXP), AVR and MSP. All are
supported by low/zero purchase cost development tools, inexpensive debug
modules and low cost development boards (some inexpensive enough to be
used as components).
People here have me paranoid about using PIC chips; I've gotten
responses such as "don't use the PIC, use a real microcontroller", but
I'd like to know why people have such a poor opinion of PIC's here.
Having used them myself, and having used the Pickit1, and also having
seen YouTube videos of some mad stuff that people have done with PIC
chips, they seem pretty cool to me. Of course I'm not a veteran that's
being playing around with microcontrollers for the last 20 years, but
if there's a rational reason why I should PIC's then I'll be happy to
listen.
They're ugly. There really isn't a lot more to it than that in the end.
That ugliness makes them harder to use in many cases. You really should
take a look at a few other micro families. When you can get a 32bit
processor like an ARM for a similar price to a PIC it gets harder to
justify using a PIC. Usually you do so because of a particular
peripheral set or the easier predictability of instruction timing.
Although relying on instruction timing to time an operation has always
seemed to me to be operating rather close to the edge.
Also, if I you have a microcontroller from a reputable manufacturer,
e.g. a PIC16F684 from Microchip, and if you use it correctly (i.e. not
drawing too much current form the IO pins, not running it at too high
a clock speed), then should it pretty much last forever? I mean if I
programmed one now and put it in a circuit, should it still be doing
its job perfectly in 80 years time?
I doubt any manufacturer would be willing to give you that assurance. I
don't remember seeing any flash memory with a quoted lifetime beyond 20
years.
Jack Gansle had an article a decade back or so IIRC about running into
that issue with some of the original Intel EPROMs in the field.
I know I've written a lot in this post, but really I just want to be
sure I'm using the right equipment before I go too far. Actually one
other thing: What's the most used microcontroller in the world, i.e.
the micrcontroller that's used in the greatest amount of products all
over the world?
Probably a 4 bitter you've never heard of.
The best equipment would be to work on a variety. That way you don't
start to expect peripherals to act only in a certain way and starting a
new architecture is not a foreboding task. And you start to learn what
really can be ported.
Finally working with a few other architectures will let you discover for
yourself if the antipathy many feel toward the PIC is justified.
Robert
** Posted from http://www.teranews.com **
.
- Follow-Ups:
- Re: Programmer / Evaluation Board / Development Board
- From: Tomás Ó hÉilidhe
- Re: Programmer / Evaluation Board / Development Board
- References:
- Programmer / Evaluation Board / Development Board
- From: Tomás Ó hÉilidhe
- Programmer / Evaluation Board / Development Board
- Prev by Date: Re: Any recommendations for audio player microcontrollers?
- Next by Date: Re: Programmer / Evaluation Board / Development Board
- Previous by thread: Programmer / Evaluation Board / Development Board
- Next by thread: Re: Programmer / Evaluation Board / Development Board
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
|
