Teensy 3.0 Kickstarter

Kickstarter - Teensy 3.0 - 32 bit ARM Cortex-M4, usable in Arduino and C

Technical Specifications:

32 bit ARM Cortex-M4 48 MHz CPU (M4 = DSP extensions)
128K Flash Memory, 16K RAM, 2K EEPROM
14* High Resolution Analog Inputs (13 bits usable, 16 bit hardware)
34* Digital I/O Pins (10 shared with analog)
10 PWM outputs
8 Timers for intervals/delays, separate from PWM
USB with dedicated DMA memory transfers
3 UARTs (serial ports)
SPI, I2C, I2S, IR modulator
I2S (for high quality audio interface)
Real Time Clock (with user-added 32.768 crystal and battery)
4 general purpose DMA channels (separate from US
Touch Sensor Inputs

Only 24 of the I/O pins are broken out to 0.1" spacing, 12 more are pads on the bottom of the board. The developer says that the basic Arduino functions will be available at launch, and he will be porting other libraries. Teensy++ 3.0 (with more pins broken out) coming next year. Could this be the basis for a new electronics platform, or are there not enough pins available?

Either way, I'm backing this - Teensys are fantastic.

This might be nice too (depending on how you can code for it) :

[www.ti.com]




PS that topic might better fit in the electronics section maybe

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Most of my technical comments should be correct, but is THIS one ?
Anyway, as a rule of thumb, always double check what people write.

Greetings all,

I just got three Teensy 3.0 boards via kickstarter. Physically, they are truly teensy! (1.4 by 0.7 inches) So far I've been trying it out via the TeensyDuino software add-on (to the Arduino dev software) written by the designer of the Teensy 3, Paul Stoffregen of PJRC.com. The T3 software is still in beta, with some rough edges, however it's not bad now and rapidly getting better. Paul is very responsive, and is releasing updated code frequently for Windows, Mac and LINUX. There's a Makefile, at least in the latest LINUX software bundle, but I haven't tried the command-line tools yet.

The T3's CPU has half the program memory of an Arduino Mega and about the same amount of RAM. However, the T3 is a 32-bit CPU and likely can fit the same or more compiled code into its FLASH mem. Although it has an Arm Cortex M-4 [1] CPU, this implementation of M-4 does not have the single-point precision floating-point math instructions. The clock is 48 MHz nominally, and can apparently be overclocked to 96 easily via TeensyDuino.

The T3's peripherals are formidable, including a 14-channel, 16-bit, SAR ADC. There are also ten PWM outputs and 8 more timers separate from the PWM. Plus the usual serial interfaces and also USB device support, with both the HID and CDC class drivers, if I'm recalling correctly.

By the way, I looked at the TI board. You can't beat the price. However the CPU included on the TI board has considerably less memory, and TI is providing limited editions of closed-source tools vs. the open-source nature of the TeensyDuino add on software. I don't think the T3 is open source hardware, and I can't really fault the developer for wanting to make a living based on his hardware designs. From what I can tell (having only started learning the T3 a couple days ago), the T3 is an excellent value.

I think the Teensy3 has great potential for controlling a RepRap. As of this writing, there are already some in stock at [www.adafruit.com] at $28, including header pins to solder in. The designer says he expects to have the T3 in stock mid/late October at $28 see [www.pjrc.com]
Note that the T3 uses a USB micro B connector (not mini.) I had a bad couple moments when all I could find were mini-B cables. I finally found one, and started in. IMHO, this *little* board has a lot of bang for the buck.



[1] Some time ago, I commented on one of the ARM forums (about their Cortex M-series devices) that any Star Trek fan knows that M5 is a *BAD* name to give to any computer. I hope they read my suggestion and will skip from Cortex M4 to M6. -- For all our sakes!

So basically, kickstarter is being used here to market already designed and made stuff. How is that different from advertising in e-bay or other website? The creative part has already been done. They are simply taking orders in this kickstarter. Why is this allowed in kickstarter? There seems to be a lot of these going on. Just curious.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/04/2012 09:19AM by brnrd.

Teensy 3.0 may use open tools for user code, but I believe it's a development dead end for Reprap purposes. Like the AVR Teensys, it uses a proprietary bootloader. This means that the micro couldn't be integrated into another board and run the same code without some build time differentiation. It would make more sense to use the Arduino Due.

As for the Stellaris Launchpad, the libraries and example code TI gives out build out of the box with arm-elf GCC and much of it is under a BSD license (unfortunately not the USB stack which may be a problem). TI has already published the API for the on-board USB debugger and the OpenOCD guys are supposedly working on it.

The market is awash with cheap ARM dev boards. If you want a cheap Cortex M4 on a board, the STM32F4Discovery is only $15. If you look around there are many that are open source. There are several ARM variants of Arduino for example, e.g. Maple. Perhaps part of the problem is that there are so many vendors and builders, no particular one has gathered momentum to stand out. There does not seem to be a need to adopt a platform that is not full open source.

I did start to make a list of all the cheap ARM dev boards with a few pros and cons but I gave up there are so many!

The real kicker is the software, an easy to use IDE and bootloader, and a rich set of libraries unencumbered by closed licenses, would be a really good reason to choose a platform. There isn't really any system that fits that description that is shipping right now but...

I expect that the Arduino Due will both provide an open hardware platform, and a familiar set of libraries which will create a de facto standard. The Atmel ARM parts are not my favourite, but one can't have everything.

FWIW, I am currently designing a Sanguino variant which will use an STM32 Cortex M0/M3 for the "Race to the Bottom" competition.