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Teensy 4.1 Development Board

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Re: Teensy 4.1 Development Board

#131

Post by subhobroto »

ATsch wrote: post #88
btashton wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are substantially more powerful than both of those families.

Also substantially more expensive, especially compared to the likes of the banana pi zero, which gets you four cores at 1.2Ghz, 512MB RAM, Linux and a GPU for 35% cheaper. Pair that with a Blue Pill STM32 for $3 if you need realtime and you still have money left over.

That looks like a great stack!

In the "Pi" family, for a Linux SBC, which pi/clone gives a good bang for the buck?

banana pi zero has shown up multiple times but since you are in the know, I wanted to ask what's a good SBC to run OpenWRT on, for example

Re: Teensy 4.1 Development Board

#132

Post by subhobroto »

ATsch wrote: post #88
btashton wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are substantially more powerful than both of those families.

Also substantially more expensive, especially compared to the likes of the banana pi zero, which gets you four cores at 1.2Ghz, 512MB RAM, Linux and a GPU for 35% cheaper. Pair that with a Blue Pill STM32 for $3 if you need realtime and you still have money left over.

> Blue Pill STM32 for $3

The Black Pill STM32 for $4 are an ever better value!

Re: Teensy 4.1 Development Board

#133

Post by neltnerb »

mamcx wrote: post #46
alpaca128 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And their official software to flash the firmware is excellent. I've had severe issues with cheaper controller boards where the pain isn't worth the price difference in my opinion.

I pick teensy for mine. Is null-issues and so easy to flash. Also exist a neat workflow where you design your keyb on http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com and then import it on https://kbfirmware.com and you get your keyb up and running very fast.

Well, there was that short lived issue where the Teensy 3.5 or 3.6 wouldn't boot right without an extra capacitor soldered on the reset line.

But it's also very encouraging that on the Teensy the issue was identified and a solution provided so quickly.

On the responsiveness note, I found a typo in the ESP32 datasheet and reported it to them through the forum. They responded very quickly and noted that it was indeed a typo (their chip as described didn't have a ground pin) and promised to fix it.

So on speed that's great. But their most recent datasheet had the same typo so...

Re: Teensy 4.1 Development Board

#134

Post by subhobroto »

Marazan wrote: post #113

To answer the frequent question about Teensy. Paul. Paul is the reason to buy a Teensy. His dedication and support is inspiring. Phenomenal.

Having raised this question [1], I am impressed at how well written the software is!

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23144432

Re: Teensy 4.1 Development Board

#135

Post by neltnerb »

sgillen wrote: post #42
blackfawn wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The standard Arduino "language" is really C/C++, is it not? (as well as all the C/C++ libraries that extend it) I suppose the "Arduino language" itself could be described as a library as well, or at least a C/C++ helper/wrapper abstraction for common tasks.

You are correct, the "Arduino language" is just C++ with some special libraries, macros, added types, and an IDE that enforces some limitations on the programmer (though you can use the Arduino library without the IDE). In practice using this library/ecosystem/whatever is different enough from "normal" embedded C/C++ libraries that to me at least to me it does feel like a different language. I think most people call…

I thought they insisted on calling it "Processing"?

I just write standard C++ or C code and it compiles fine. Hard to complain about that too much if I don't care to use the extra features. You can just access registers directly even if you use the Arduino IDE and configure things yourself if you want.

But yeah, I'd personally use visual studio code if I wasn't going to want to use the arduino libraries anyway. It's not a great editor. VS Code probably isn't that great either, but it's good enough for the little coding I do (I mostly design circuit boards that frequently use these little boards as brains).

Re: Teensy 4.1 Development Board

#136

Post by chillacy »

MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #116
ohazi wrote: post #82

PSA: Networking on microcontrollers is a giant pain in the ass. Don't get me wrong, boards like this (and ESP/Realtek boards with WiFi) are great for hacky prototypes. But if you're building an embedded device that will be deployed in any sort of volume, a small application processor running Linux will make your life dramatically easier. You can keep it asleep most of the time if your power budget is tight. The hard…

But what to use? The Pi Zero can't be used for mass-production, because you can't get it in quantity. Other options exist, but they are even more expensive, or obscure chinesium for which you can't get documentation or someone to talk to.

Is particle.io considered one of the more expensive ones? I've used them for one-off projects but it looks like they do volume discounts.

Re: Teensy 4.1 Development Board

#137

Post by Hello71 »

rwmj wrote: post #129
ohazi wrote: post #82

PSA: Networking on microcontrollers is a giant pain in the ass. Don't get me wrong, boards like this (and ESP/Realtek boards with WiFi) are great for hacky prototypes. But if you're building an embedded device that will be deployed in any sort of volume, a small application processor running Linux will make your life dramatically easier. You can keep it asleep most of the time if your power budget is tight. The hard…

It has a 32 bit processor and at least 1 MB of RAM and 8 MB of flash. This makes it considerably more powerful than the first PC I owned. Could it run Minix 3?

as I recall, PCs from the 90s also had extremely poor networking support.

Re: Teensy 4.1 Development Board

#138

Post by nikofeyn »

adammunich wrote: post #86
realharo wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are things on the commonly used RTOSes? I'm not really into hardware much, only fairly recently learned basic electronics as a hobby, but I've seen ARM push their "mbed" ( https://os.mbed.com/ ) thing in many places recently (most recently saw their logo printed on a nRF52 BLE dev kit). I've also seen Amazon get more involved with (in charge of?) FreeRTOS ( https://aws.amazon.com/freertos/ ) quite some time ago.…

The RTOS world is much less of an 'operating system' and more so a bare-bones task scheduler. It's not like a POSIX environment at all.

that's not really true anymore. it may apply to things like pharlap or vsworks, but there are more modern options that give you a nice real-time linux environment.

https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterp...

https://www.ni.com/en-us/innovations/white-papers/13/introdu...

Re: Teensy 4.1 Development Board

#139

Post by detaro »

fermienrico wrote: post #126
detaro wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, board layouts aren't either, forgot about that. The circuit itself can't be copyrighted, so you do not need a license to make your own board with the same components. I personally quite like the approach of using the bootloader chip as light DRM: The majority of the value is in software you can freely use, with licenses provided. Prototyping with a Teensy and then making a product using the same parts and the l…

Yep, I really like how the bootloader works - upgrades are drag and drop. I'll write to Paul if he is open for selling the bootloader license to me for commercial use. I am sure we can come to an agreement.

He sells the chip pre-programmed for the older versions: https://www.pjrc.com/store/ic_mkl02.html

Support for the chip used in Teensy 4 is apparently coming in the near-ish future: https://forum.pjrc.com/threads/57132-Bootloader-Chip-For-Tee...

Re: Teensy 4.1 Development Board

#140

Post by analog31 »

cpach wrote: post #6

Just out of curiosity, what could be a use case for this thingy?

I've used mostly the Teensy LC, 3.2 and 3.6 boards. I use them as kind of a cross between a GPIO and a data acquisition board. For instance it's easy to plug one into USB and write a program that lets you talk to it, e.g., from Python, to read voltages, turn things on / off, etc.

From there, it's not a huge quantum leap to program some lengthy sequences of operations into the Teensy itself rather than in Python, e.g., averaging 1000 consecutive analog readings, or interfacing with some interesting chip via SPI bus. Migrating this functionality onto the Teensy reduces the amount of USB traffic needed to implement a function, so the "system" as a whole becomes more efficient.

Also, the Teensy can do stuff in real time based on its internal clock, that can be difficult on a modern operating system.

The T3.6 has built-in floating point, which makes some kind of programming easier.

So far I haven't created any stand-alone uses to speak of. I'm mainly interested in stuff that extends the functionality of my regular PC. I've even created such mundane things as a USB temperature sensor. While not the cheapest or most elegant way to do it, I was able to spin it up in no time flat for something that needed it.

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