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Microcontroller Dev Boards: What features do you like to have (or to add?)

baldengineer

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A couple of weeks ago, I bribed (with coffee) to send me one of his Pi PIco Eurocards. As the name implies, these are a development board for the Pi Pico / RP2040. In the past, another friend sent me one of his all-in-one microcontroller development boards (pictured above). And I have designed a few boards that had development features on them. Besides those, boards like Adafruit's Feathers or even the iconic Arduino Uno could be considered dev boards. Last, historically, microcontroller manufacturers had elaborate evaluation platforms for their chips.

All of these points made me wonder: what are the features YOU want to see in a microcontroller development board?

image

If we use 's Eurocard, some notable features are:

  • Headers for changing power source (external / Pi Pico / Programmer)
  • Integrated programmer/debugger (RP2040-based Xiao, in this case)
  • Prototype areas for through-hole and surface mount parts
  • SD Card
  • Button
  • LED
  • (and many more)

In addition to features, what tricks or tips have people learned when making a board like this one?

Parents

  • i don't really have requests in stuff that should be on the board, I prefer to have zero clutter or parts that I don't really use in the project present to avoid conflicts and confusion on my part. also I don´t like any customization in routing that require Arduino cores, DTOs or any other compability layer , not even a renumbering of the pins. Everything should work exactly as if I put the bare chip I build upon on a board, NO deviationsm no porting.
    My biggest request is to have Flawless software support OOTB, no special linux derivates that never get updated or proprietary SDKs.
    a simple way without any additonal hardware to flash code / boot (native usb for example is great)
    and absolutelly Open source construction, no proprietary software needed and only Bog standard mainline Linux support on day one. that would be my biggest request.

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  • i don't really have requests in stuff that should be on the board, I prefer to have zero clutter or parts that I don't really use in the project present to avoid conflicts and confusion on my part. also I don´t like any customization in routing that require Arduino cores, DTOs or any other compability layer , not even a renumbering of the pins. Everything should work exactly as if I put the bare chip I build upon on a board, NO deviationsm no porting.
    My biggest request is to have Flawless software support OOTB, no special linux derivates that never get updated or proprietary SDKs.
    a simple way without any additonal hardware to flash code / boot (native usb for example is great)
    and absolutelly Open source construction, no proprietary software needed and only Bog standard mainline Linux support on day one. that would be my biggest request.

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