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

baldengineer

image

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?

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  • I think of it as 4 levels of dev card, each is useful:

    1. The starting point as   would say is to breakout every pin of the MCU onto a header and provide enough infrastructure to program and rum.
    2. The next step up for me would be to incorporate standard connectors for standard interfaces. Like USB, UART, SPI + power, I2C + power, Analog + power, digital + power, servo, etc.
    3. The next step up for me would be to incorporate standard connectors for standard peripherals and communication functions. Like a display or HDMI, keypad, Bluetooth, WiFi, audio, video, MIPI, SD, etc.
    4. Then finally more complete but constrained systems that include on-board peripherals like displays, sensors, speakers, keypads, cameras, microphones, etc.

    The difference between level 2 and 3 is that level 2 is mostly adding purpose connectors for MCU functions, where level 3 generally needs support chips or areas for peripherals to reside.

    There might only be 1 type of level 1 module, but as the levels get more complex, the number of variants would increase to accommodate different feature sets.

    I'm not a big fan of breadboard areas on a dev card since it wastes space and I generally use custom PCBs to perform "breadboard" functions.

    If modules try to make a one-size-fits-all solution it ends up to have a lot of wasted resources or it is too costly or it consumes too much power or it is too big.

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  • I think of it as 4 levels of dev card, each is useful:

    1. The starting point as   would say is to breakout every pin of the MCU onto a header and provide enough infrastructure to program and rum.
    2. The next step up for me would be to incorporate standard connectors for standard interfaces. Like USB, UART, SPI + power, I2C + power, Analog + power, digital + power, servo, etc.
    3. The next step up for me would be to incorporate standard connectors for standard peripherals and communication functions. Like a display or HDMI, keypad, Bluetooth, WiFi, audio, video, MIPI, SD, etc.
    4. Then finally more complete but constrained systems that include on-board peripherals like displays, sensors, speakers, keypads, cameras, microphones, etc.

    The difference between level 2 and 3 is that level 2 is mostly adding purpose connectors for MCU functions, where level 3 generally needs support chips or areas for peripherals to reside.

    There might only be 1 type of level 1 module, but as the levels get more complex, the number of variants would increase to accommodate different feature sets.

    I'm not a big fan of breadboard areas on a dev card since it wastes space and I generally use custom PCBs to perform "breadboard" functions.

    If modules try to make a one-size-fits-all solution it ends up to have a lot of wasted resources or it is too costly or it consumes too much power or it is too big.

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