Development Kit Survey: do you love them, or hate them?

We’ve all been there. You sign up to a hands-on session and get a free development kit to play with. During the session, the instructor shows you how to download and setup the development environment, compile some example code and Hey Presto! You’ve got a flashing LED.

Great, you think. Another flashing LED. But that’s just the key to the door, now you have the chance to make that LED do whatever you want. Of course, the real potential lies in what else the kit can do. Or rather, what else you can make the kit do for you.

Some kits are better than others, and it depends on what the manufacturer thinks is important to you, the developer. It also reflects the manufacturer's own objectives. That sounds sinister, it’s not supposed to.

Many development kits may be low cost but they’re a big investment, both by the manufacturer and by you, because you have to put your time and effort into understanding the component at the heart of that kit, and use that understanding to inform your decision-making process at the start of a new project.

Or do you? Do you use development kits and evaluation boards to kickstart your product development, or do you go from idea to schematic to breadboard to PCB design? Do you even bother with breadboarding anymore, now that simulation technology is so good?

There are many ways to start a project, and many uses for development kits. You may be a fan of kits that include breadboarding space for your own additions. That’s something we see less of these days, thanks to the shift toward hardware-attached boards that plug in to ‘standard’ interfaces.

Big names here include Raspberry Pi and Arduino, but ESP32 is quietly (or not) moving up the ranks. And that points to another possible trend; is the line blurring between off-the-shelf module and on-the-bench development kit?

Some manufacturers now favour a board format that plays nicely with popular maker boards, but does that add value or remove flexibility? Would you take a development kit all the way through to early production? It must be said, the cost of a kit in moderate volume could be lower than spinning your own PCB.

And speaking of spinning PCBs, what about those boards that come with assets like schematics and Gerber files? Do you ever use them to get your own PCB off to a flying start? Do you use the bill of materials (if provided) as the basis for your own parts list?

Embedded design is tough, and it’s only getting tougher with the shift towards Edge AI and machine learning. The effect of moving the complexity away from the user and deeper into the system is that the engineers developing those systems need to know more about these new technologies. Perhaps that’s where development kits are most useful today?

You might have some thoughts on this, and if you would like to share them with Farnell and its parent company, Avnet, then we’d love to hear them. We’ve created a short survey (honestly, it takes around 3 minutes) to capture your thoughts as efficiently as possible. If you can spare the time you can find the survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/Avnet-DevKit-Survey

Edit by cstanton : Have a go at the survey - as an act of kindness you may be gifted with a product from our multicomp pro range!