mbed for uController Aps

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www.hifisonix.com
Joined 2003
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There was a short thread about mbed in the 'tools' forum, but I think it probably belongs here

mbed is a 40 pin ARM 32bit based uController module that comes with 2MB of flash, 128k of RAM, USB, ethernet, 3 serial comms ports, PWM, SPI, CAN, 6 A-D channels, 1 D-A channel, RTC and up to 25 digital I/O. Its powered off 5V, and draws about 55mA when running, although you can put it into power down or sleep mode, or alternatively turn off unused peripherals to really get the power right down. There's a facility to provide a back-up battery voltage to keep the RTC running when the power is off.

I have to say, its a pretty fine ucontroller board, having come from an 8 bit 8051 environment. You cannot really compare 8 bit devices to the power and speed of ARM 32bit. The compiler resides on the mbed server, so you actually work on line and then down load your compiled code into the mbed - which is connected to your PC via a USB cable - which simply appears as a USB drive on your system.

There are drivers on the mbed forum so that you can get the mbed to access the internet directly to eg write data to a web address, Twitter and so forth.

I am an programming novice, but the C++ API library on the site is absolutely great and ranges from simple digital I/O through to A-D, PID controllers (!), I2C, CAN BUS, internet I/O and some stuff to drive displays, though at this stage, the graphics driver library is not as well developed as PIC's graphics driver library offering. However, I am sure that will change. The mbed forum is friendly and well moderated with lots of people willing to help if you get stuck and a huge step up from some of the other s/ware forums I tapped into in the past to try to solve problems.

Take a look here:-


Rapid Prototyping for Microcontrollers | mbed
 
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