ImageCraft JumpStart Microbox Education Kit - Part 1: Preview

RE: ImageCraft JumpStart Microbox Education Kit - Part 1: Preview

Jan Cumps — Thu, 05 Nov 2015 15:21:20 GMT

Part 3a is a review of the led matrix and the i2c I/O expander

ImageCraft JumpStart Microbox Education Kit - Part 3a: The Education Shield - LED matrix and I/O expander

RE: ImageCraft JumpStart Microbox Education Kit - Part 1: Preview

Jan Cumps — Sat, 31 Oct 2015 11:28:59 GMT

I've posted the second part of this review:

ImageCraft JumpStart Microbox Education Kit - Part 2: Stepping Through an Example - what do I learn?

RE: ImageCraft JumpStart Microbox Education Kit - Part 1: Preview

1234jgs — Thu, 29 Oct 2015 05:01:39 GMT

Looks interesting, thanks for posting.

RE: ImageCraft JumpStart Microbox Education Kit - Part 1: Preview

richardman — Thu, 29 Oct 2015 01:35:11 GMT

I was going to wait until Jan to post the full review before commenting, but since that has not happened yet, let me point the readers to this page:

https://c4everyone.com/index.php/company/why-jumpstart-tools

That should give you an idea of our company's positioning in the embedded space. In short, we are not aiming to be an "Arduino Killer" per se, but rather we offer easy-to-use professional tools at reasonable / affordable prices, and we back them up with unparalleled support. This means that professional engineers can get productive and start writing code in a matter of hours instead of weeks, and the Non-Commercial license and the JumpStart MicroBox offer a more powerful alternative than Arduino with Standard C compiler and JumpStart API.

If you have only programmed an AVR, PIC16 or other 8/16-bit microcontrollers, the jump to the Cortex-M is huge. Don't just take my words, search for phrases like "Getting Started with Cortex-M programming" or "STM32F Standard Peripheral Library" etc. and read what other people have to say. The JumpStart API makes this process extremely easy. As a user said recently:

[On looking at JumpStart API] "Your stuff is great; by God, somebody can code old school in your organization!"

RE: ImageCraft JumpStart Microbox Education Kit - Part 1: Preview

DAB — Mon, 19 Oct 2015 19:47:13 GMT

Nice post Jan,

I agree, if your project is aimed at learning C and controlling an Arduino type processor, then they should have either used the standard IDE and included the code headers to run their board or made a duplicate so that the users can advance beyond the kit.

DAB

RE: ImageCraft JumpStart Microbox Education Kit - Part 1: Preview

shabaz — Mon, 19 Oct 2015 01:25:40 GMT

Hi Jan,

It will be great to hear what you make of it. All too often some of the technical benefits get lost in the product website / datasheet.

I found the comparison with GCC on the website rather odd for example - usually people list the major benefits first!, but it looked back-to-front. To me the

major benefit is the direct support, and the next benefit looks like ease of use (possibly) from the comments to this post so far.

To me it looks like the other comparison items here are minor differentiators at best - personal opinion:

[View:/resized-image/__size/620x298/__key/commentfiles/f7d226abd59f475c9d224a79e3f0ec07-455067f1-30ab-4df4-9500-e657b166f949/1754.contentimage_5F00_180134.png:620:298]

Not stating it is a bad product, it could be great - but from a read of that list, I wouldn't find it appealing. They need to re-do that list - surely it can be improved into a better comparison if this compiler is so good.

The first comparison item states that it is Non-GCC - is that an advantage or a disadvantage? GCC is one of the success stories of open source and has massive market share - would be interesting to see a figure.

The second two items seem so irrelevant it borders on the bizarre to include them. Usually people only modify a file at a time; it doesn't take a significant time to compile a single file to the extent that it would be a major product differentiator surely? I wonder if they meant the entire build process. But the usual answer is to throw CPU power at your build server.

On a microcontroller if you're having to frequently rebuild the entire code or even a single file repeatedly, then something is not right in the user's software design process.

The 'Select devices by name' may be a ST-specific-toolchain issue? I've not seen that with Code Composer Studio for Cortex-M development for TI devices. There you can select by part name.

The state-of-the-art debugger sounds interesting - the free debugger is GDB of course, and has a learning curve but is extremely powerful. And whatever you learn with GDB can be re-used from microcontroller

programs all the way to massive applications running on Linux on (say) Cortex-A or Intel CPUs.

I've not used J-Link with Code Composer, but J-Link was seamless with Cortex-M with Infineon's IDE. And in general the experience is similar to Code Composer since it is based on Eclipse.

MISRA checks are available in GCC too. I don't know what "CRC generation and other production featues" means - there is the free Linux cksum command that can be used for CRC computation.

The direct support is great, but if there is a comparison then it is fair to state that TI, Infineon and others have very active forums which are a good option for non-commercial user (which is what the

JumpStart Educational Kit is for).

RE: ImageCraft JumpStart Microbox Education Kit - Part 1: Preview

eugenenine — Sun, 18 Oct 2015 22:42:37 GMT

Looks like their site only has windows downloads?

RE: ImageCraft JumpStart Microbox Education Kit - Part 1: Preview

e14 Contributor — Sun, 18 Oct 2015 22:20:37 GMT

I have been using Imagecraft compilers for more than 15 for professional development, more than 100 products in production for various clients. If you want an easy to use C compiler/debugger then Imagecraft should be your choice, low cost, world class support. The other big two are cumbersome giants that really do not live up to the price you pay. Look forward to your next review.

RE: ImageCraft JumpStart Microbox Education Kit - Part 1: Preview

sidprice — Sun, 18 Oct 2015 21:26:27 GMT

Hi, I am the developer of the Jumpstart debugger that is a part of the Jumpstart Microbox kit and also I am a longtime AVR programmer. The main reason I never switched to the Cortex MCUs is simple, the IO is so different and complex compared to the AVR. As part of testing the Jumpstart debugger this last week I needed to write some timer code for a Cortex MCU. I couldn’t believe how easy it was with the Jumpstart API.

RE: ImageCraft JumpStart Microbox Education Kit - Part 1: Preview

e14 Contributor — Sun, 18 Oct 2015 21:19:03 GMT

I have been using Imagecraft products for more than 15 years in a professional environment. They always provide great value for money and first class support.

Yes, the IDE is open-source but does that make it a non-professional product? I don't think so.

RE: ImageCraft JumpStart Microbox Education Kit - Part 1: Preview

balearicdynamics — Sun, 18 Oct 2015 10:18:04 GMT

Seems nice!