I’ve been programming arduino’s and rabbit chips for a few years, both of which are easy to use and have good development tools. I’d like to check out some ARM chips, but since there are a few options (LPC, ST, etc), I’m not sure where to get started.
Any suggestions?
Thanks!
Justin
Normally I would say the LPC2xxx ARM7’s, because of the support out there for it, but seriously, I’ve pretty much replaced all ARM7 work with Cortex-M3’s. They are simpler, cheaper, and very capable.
Luminary Micro is so much cheaper than the others right now in singles, I can’t really consider anything else. Somebody else can list off the pro’s and cons, but I think the major contenders here are Luminary Micro (Texas Instruments now), STM32, and the LPC13xx and LPC15xx chips.
I’m ordering some of the LPC11xx Cortex-M0’s from Digikey next order. Anyone have any idea on the power usage stats? The datasheets I’ve seen still have TBD on them, but they should be really good.
Great… that’s what I was hoping you’d say :). The Cortex-M3’s are appealing to me due to the price and featureset. Any suggestions on a dev board? I see that sparkfun only carries two of them.
If you want to try out the Luminary Micro’s, the best option looks like it’s the EKT-LM3S811 evaluation kit. Not only is it a small devel board, it has an on board JTAG programmer that you can use for external programming as well as programming the on board chip. All for $50, which is about the price of just the Olimex USB Tiny programmer alone.
http://search.digikey.com/scripts/DkSea … 11&x=0&y=0
There are different versions, but the only difference is the trial version of the development tools that come in the box.
For development, you can try out the GCC/OpenOCD free option. I had a hell of a time getting that working and to save my sanity and my time I spent the $150 on Rowley Crossworks for ARM. It turns out to be a great investment since I started with SAM7 ARM7’s, and I’m doing a lot more ARM work now than I expected.
How about [Mbed. A neat LPC1768 board where all the tools are on-line so you don’t need to fight with tool-chain setup.
I have one and they’re neat.
Graham](http://mbed.org)
I’ve used NXP LPC 2103, 2106, 2129.
Assuming newbie wants small micro (no Linux), these are mature, proven. M3 is up and coming but a bit bleeding edge for a newbie. Also, are there now shipping equivalents to the 128KB/512KB flash, 32KB+ RAM NXPs?
My apps can’t squeeze into the low end M3s. The 1768 looks very good
NXP ARM users have the benefit of my excellent LPC2000 Yahoo group, with over 8,000 members.
Leon
mbed looks cool, except I couldn’t deal with a web-based compiler. It’s VIM for me, or nothing 
JustinHoMi:
mbed looks cool, except I couldn’t deal with a web-based compiler. It’s VIM for me, or nothing
Edit with VIM all you like, then cut 'n paste into the web page. I’m assuming that your copy of VIM doesn’t actually compile source to ARM object, but just calls tools to do so. 
Starting out with ARM it can be a real struggle to get a (free) tool-chain up and running, especially on Windows.
Graham
JustinHoMi:
I’d like to check out some ARM chips, but since there are a few options (LPC, ST, etc), I’m not sure where to get started.
To get started with ARM we recommend the LPC boards from Coridium Corp:
and Embedded Artists:
http://www.embeddedartists.com/
Sparkfun stock Coridium’s ARMmite boards.
Tons of examples, tools chain, etc…
http://www.siwawi.arubi.uni-kl.de/avr_p … _projects/
This site helped me a lot when I started with ARM.
Angelo
Be aware that you may not be able to use a JTAG on these.cfb:
JustinHoMi:
I’d like to check out some ARM chips, but since there are a few options (LPC, ST, etc), I’m not sure where to get started.To get started with ARM we recommend the LPC boards from Coridium.
True. In our case it has not been an issue as we have not found a need for JTAG debugging facilities when programming in Oberon. I assume the same applies to BASIC programmers. C programmers may well need JTAG as elusive runtime bugs are easier to create with C.stevech:
Be aware that you may not be able to use a JTAG on these.cfb:
To get started with ARM we recommend the LPC boards from Coridium.
On the other hand, it is an advantage that you don’t need to use JTAG for programming the ARMmite. It has a built-in USB to UART converter so you can program it simply via a PC USB port using a tool like FlashMagic.
You might look at LPCXpresso from NXP. $30 for a simple board and JTAG emulator and complete toolchain. Available from Digikey and a bunch of other distis
bytesthedust:
You might look at LPCXpresso from NXP. $30 for a simple board and JTAG emulator and complete toolchain. Available from Digikey and a bunch of other distis
That looks pretty good. Is the LPC Link JTAG supported by other devel platforms other than Code Red? It doesn’t look like it’s an FTDI based one.
Hmm… so I took the LPC1114 parts off of my Digikey order, since I don’t see support for for them or CM0 in CrossWorks. They do have support of the LPC13xx low cost ARM CM3, so I’ll check those out.
TheDirty:
bytesthedust:
You might look at LPCXpresso from NXP. $30 for a simple board and JTAG emulator and complete toolchain. Available from Digikey and a bunch of other distisThat looks pretty good. Is the LPC Link JTAG supported by other devel platforms other than Code Red? It doesn’t look like it’s an FTDI based one.
It is not based on FTDI devices but on an LPC3000 device. The firmware is written by Code Red and, hence, is locked to Code Red software. There may well be other LPCXpresso gadgets coming out for other tool sets, but my suspicion is that you’ll only ever see the Code Red LPCXpresso JTAG adapter. I do not see any reason for any other tool company to support this adapter at all, for many, many reasons. We looked at it, but the business case just doesn’t stack up.
TheDirty:
Hmm… so I took the LPC1114 parts off of my Digikey order, since I don’t see support for for them or CM0 in CrossWorks. They do have support of the LPC13xx low cost ARM CM3, so I’ll check those out.
We have CM0 devices here; we just need to ensure everything works before shipping it out.
paul_l_curtis:
It is not based on FTDI devices but on an LPC3000 device. The firmware is written by Code Red and, hence, is locked to Code Red software. There may well be other LPCXpresso gadgets coming out for other tool sets, but my suspicion is that you’ll only ever see the Code Red LPCXpresso JTAG adapter. I do not see any reason for any other tool company to support this adapter at all, for many, many reasons. We looked at it, but the business case just doesn’t stack up.
Thanks. Unfortunately that limits it’s usefulness significantly.
Thanks Paul. I figured it was coming.paul_l_curtis:
We have CM0 devices here; we just need to ensure everything works before shipping it out.
Unfortunately I realized I have more microcontroller makes and varieties here than I have actual practical projects. I really need to stop fooling around with anything new that I find interesting and just get something done.
I’ll throw in my vote for the Cortex-M3. This is a much simpler, cleaner architecture than the ARM7. I’ve ported my home-grown RTOS to both architectures–it took over a week for the ARM7 and less than two days for the Cortex-M3 (owing to its cleaner architecture.)
TI/Luminary has a complete line of parts from low-end to high along with reasonably priced evaluation boards and excellent support on their forums.