What is your opinion of Galago (Arduino compatible Kickstarter Project) ?

http://www.electronicsweekly.com/Articles/22/02/2010/48047/arm-adds-dsp-in-cortex-m4-core.htm

http://www.electronicsweekly.com/Articles/22/02/2010/48047/arm-adds-dsp-in-cortex-m4-core.htm

The Teensy has an M4 while Galago has an M3.  According to the article (thanks for the link), Galago is not as powerful as Teensy.

- If it is intended to replace typical Arduino like applications will the lesser M3 be enough?

- Is the Teensy's longer development history (more projects available) make a difference?

- Is the debugging feature of the Galago worth it? Enough to overcome the previous two?

- Can Teensy come up with a debugging scheme, or is it somehow built into the galago?

Thanks in advance

I designed Galago, so perhaps I can answer your question.  The NXP chip we use is has a 50% faster top clock speed than the Teensy's Freescale chip.  It's also widely believed that the Teensy's Cortex-M4 has a floating-point unit but this is not the case - it only has integer vector extensions which must be specifically coded for, like MMX on the Pentium.  Our M3's capabilities also outlcass the Arduino in every regard and its built-in debugger is unmatched compared to what's possible on AVR-based boards like the Arduino.  Finally, there's no possibility of debugging the Teensy 3.0 - Paul Stoffregen stated that the JTAG pins are not broken out on his board, so even an external debugger isn't an option.

I hope this was helpful info!

Happy to see you posting here, Kuy.  I backed the Teensy 3.0 a couple weeks ago as I was excited about the prospect of using Arduino on ARM (and unsure of the DUE roadmap).  I noticed on the Galago page states C, C++ and Wiring.  Could you comment as to how similar the process of developing with Wiring on the Galago will be to AVR-based Arduino?

Thanks,

Drew

Certainly. We're implementing this with a thin layer on top of our normal API that provides compatibility with Arduino/Wiring API functions like digitalRead() etc.  For marketing literature brevity and in the absence of a formal standard we call this Wiring compatibility, though we may need approval or buy-in from the Wiring copyright holders to state that officially.

Going forward, we intend the aforementioned compatibility layer to act more as a bridge for Arduino users than a long-term platform because we believe our API is better-designed, more usable and will lead to ultimately better projects.  Obviously whether that turns out remains to be seen after release.

Thanks for the info.  I'm also a backer of the Teensy 3.0, but just joined the Galago Starter Kit and can't wait to compare the two.

Thanks for the answers.  This project will be a success, hope that the whole project grows exponentially in the future.