Any of you folks have a good suggestion? After working with a particular SBC for a couple of months, I have determined that it will just not do. I'm looking for a forum where I may ask around for some suggestions for my next SBC purchases (I'm authorized to sink money into three).
If any of you are embedded programmers and you know a good forum for that type work, please let me know.
Im partial to the Basic Stamp for things that dont require a lot of speed, and I use ITX boards for things that do. ITX are great since you can develop and test the application on your system, then migrate it once the bugs are worked out. If you need something thats in between, the motorola 68HC11 series is a decent µC that has several C compilers available.
As for forums, try embedded.com, although I do think we shoudl have a channel here for embedded specific C/C++ programming issues (wink wink nod nod)
Last edited by abachler; 02-08-2008 at 09:37 AM.
I'm using the 68HC12 for my embedded class and the Atmel Mega128 for my micromouse project.
So far I prefer the Atmel controller. But that could just be because I have access to a better tool chain. /shrug
Tool chains make a big difference for embedded systems. An easy to use and/or inexpensive/free tool chain encourages people to try you product. A $1000 entry barrier tends to discourage migration. Its amazing that many companies think nothing about spending $10,000 for a blinking LED panel, but refuse to buy a $1000 piece of software.
Heh the compiler/IDE we have the 68HC12 is actually worse then notepad. The only good thing it has going for it is that it'll detect when a file has been modified by another program. Which means I can write the code in my normal editor and then just use the compiler to do its thing.
For the Atmel I do the programming on my laptop which has cygwin running so I have avr-gcc, make, and the like. So I can just use those to make the hex file and then use avr studio to program the board. If I get around to it I'll put a bootloader on it and use bluetooth to program it
Embedded program is weird though, it is more difficult then programming for a standard desktop environment but oh so much fun. I can't tell you how it felt to get 3 leds blinking at different frequencies using just a real-time kernel. Though I do wish someone would have warned me about all of the datasheet reading it requires.
Oh I love reading datasheets, if you don't you must be wierd
I like to spend my vacation catching up on my technical reading.
In college I built a µP out of 7400 series chips.
It isn't so much as like or dislike as much as surprise. I don't think I've had a single coding session for an embedded program where I didn't have to drag out some datasheet for some component.
And who hasn't build a microprocessor out of gates? The real fun comes from doing it just with opamps (not, analog sucks)
oh no, try using FET's
>> The real fun comes from doing it just with opamps (not, analog sucks)
You suck!
You make it sound like opamps are a more simplistic version of digital gates. Even the crappy 741 has about ... I dunno, 15-20 transistors, minimum. Digital gates should really have no more than 6 to 10. Digital is easy. Analogue is hard.
Not the FETs...Originally Posted by abachler
oh no, try using FET's
I didn't say which one was easier or harder. I just said that analog sucks.Digital is easy. Analogue is hard.
Maybe in your mind. Considering that the conversion was escalating to the more complex I'm not sure how you arrived that point.You make it sound like opamps are a more simplistic version of digital gates.
The most fun I had building a microprocessor was using VHDL. Nothing like writing what the behavior should be and making the tool chain figure out how to synthesize it.
I think every programmer should be forced to do some embedded programing. The experience has been great. Nothing like having to know your environment really well in orer to do some of the smallest tasks.
I average ~1.2 FET's per gate input NAND and NOR are easy to implement with 1 FET per input.
You just hit the nail on the head.
I know a lot of programmers, who are now Senior Management, who agree with that.
good lord, the ultimate requirement for any application, it has to be able to run on an embedded system, talk about making lean software.
no bloat allowed!!!
They should start programmers out with embedded before they let them touch real computers. I had the ?good? fortune of learning computers 'back in the day' when 2.5K of memory was pretty much the norm. Slow systems and cramped memory force a programmer to learn extremely efficient optimization, not just code level optimization, but algorithmic optimization as well. I feel that that early experience was extremely useful.
