I keep mentioning how I love the simplicity of the Arduino platform, and the endless libraries it includes to support all kinds of hobby projects. I don't know if I've mentioned how I cry a little every time I see an incredible hardware platform with incredibly difficult to use tools.
That's why I was VERY happy to have been introduced to not one, but TWO new easy platforms in the last few weeks.
Energia
The first is Energia: http://energia.nu
Energia is based on the Arduino platform, and actually looks identical to Arduino other than the colour scheme. It has great samples, and seems to support most of the libraries that come with Arduino (and they seem to be working on porting the rest).
Why would I be excited about another Arduino style platform? Easy - Energia supports the Texas Instruments MSP430 Launchpad, which means you can do most of the Arduino examples on a dev board that only costs $4.30 (which for me included fast shipping to my doorstep). For standalone projects I think the chips can be bought for something like 50 cents.
So I dusted off the two MSP430 boards I had sitting in my drawer since I discovered Arduino, and tried it out - it works great! Other than a few pin changes (which are well documented), the sketches can pretty much be ported directly from Arduino to Energia.
The only thing I didn't like is that it felt a little less refined than Arduino. For example, if you run a sketch that uses the serial port, you may need to reset the board before you can upload the next sketch. Not a big deal once you know the issue. But it's a fairly new platform, so I'm actually very impressed at how well it all works!
mbed.org
The other platform is one I was introduced to by Pat Kelly (one of the awesome folks of e14!) - mbed.org
mbed.org is really neat in that it takes a different, more modern, approach to firmware development. The dev environment is completely online, which is handy in that you don't need to install anything locally, and it encourages sharing of project - which means there are already lots of samples to play with, in addition to the samples and libraries mbed already includes.
The environment itself is also very easy to use - it's similar to Arduino in that it hides all the program setup details a hobbyist doesn't need to know, and, like Arduino, it makes references to pins and functions look like normal english - no complicated bit manipulation and cryptic references!
Another really cool innovation is that the board connects up to your computer like a USB flash drive - it shows up on the desktop as a flash drive and installing new firmware is as easy as just dragging and dropping a new build file onto the drive! This also has the handy side effect that you can keep a few different program files handy and very quickly switch from one to another.
I've played with that a little bit already, using the Freescale Freedom FRDM-KL25z that Pat and e14 were kind enough to send me to try out. I seriously enjoyed my introduction to it, and so far it looks like an amazing new addition to the hobbyist's toolbox!
At around $12 this board is also a steal of a deal - at less than half the price of the average Arduino Uno, it has twice the pins, PLUS a built in accelerometer and touch slider, and tri-colour LEDs. The chip is also faster, running at 3x the clock speed of the Uno, and it has 4x the flash.
I'll post more about this FRDM-KL25z later - there's a lot to talk about!
And did I mention that mbed.org is free to use!?
To me as a hobbyist, these were both very exciting discoveries!
It opens up a lot of new possibilities: The MSP430 is a nice super low-cost platform, great for little projects that don't need much power or pins; and for just a little more money you can get all the amazing capabilities that come with the FRDM-KL25z.
I'm curious to see what all I can do with both of these platforms!
ps, don't get me wrong - I'll still be using the Arduino platform too (it's very stable and comfortable to use). I think all 3 will be seeing regular use in my hobby projects!
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