191–200 of 211 posts
I remember using Teensy based on AT90USB1286 microcontroller for 4 quadrant 3phase AC motor torque control. Worked like a charm. Glad to hear they're stilll in business.
With the supercheap sub $5 ESP32/STM32 boards (both have Arduino core support) and their equally cheap add onboards for camera, ethernet or USB OTG - who exactly are using the Teensy line today and why? I'm genuinely curious.
I've been playing around with boards like this that keep getting smaller and smaller. Do people generally prototype something using these boards and then go directly to manufacturing? I imagine you'd want to have a smaller package than use these types of components as part of you larger product right?
I wouldn't hesitate to do so. It all depends on what kind of price / volume you're trying to target. For very short run, garage-shop types of operations, not only is handling surface-mount a headache, but there's a learning curve to getting any kind of circuit boards manufactured. In addition to these microcontroller boards, you can find "breakout" boards for a variety of sophisticated components, and combine them on…
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…
On a similar note, does anyone know of good resources for beginners for prototyping all the way through small-scale manufacturing of an embedded device? As a web & backend developer who likes to tinker with Arduino/Teensy style projects, I've always been curious what all would be involved in actually getting some units manufactured, like for a small kickstarter run or something. It seems pretty doable these days to g…
It was basically the same process as looperhacks: hook stuff up on a breadboard, turn that into a prototype PCB design, iterate on prototypes if there are problems, then just put 100 on the order form instead of 5 when you send it to the manufacturer.
You asked in the other comment about flashing and that depends. For me, my project was basically just a motherboard for an ESP32 dev board, which would serve as the logic controller. Since it has a micro-USB port and there were only 100 of them, I just flashed it from my laptop the same as any dev board.
For larger scale manufacturing, you can have the flash written in advance, before manufacture or put some exposed contacts on your board that can be reached with pogo pins and write your flash through those pins.
You can also outsource all of this to a contract manufacturer like Seeedstudio [0].
As for updates, the ESP32's software has built in OTA functionality that you can configure however you please. My boards are connected with MQTT over WiFi anyway so I added a simple "update now please" command that triggers the OTA. Aside from that you could add a USB port or stream the OTA over bluetooth from a smartphone.
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.
For example Raspberry Pi has the Compute Module, ESP32 comes as a solderable module and for the Teensy I suspect you'd just put a IMXRT1062 in your design.
I remember using Teensy based on AT90USB1286 microcontroller for 4 quadrant 3phase AC motor torque control. Worked like a charm. Glad to hear they're stilll in business.
Sounds cool. What did you need 3 phase 4 quadrant for, if I may ask out of curiosity?
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…
That's a matter of opinion. If you don't know jack about network programming, then of course you can retreat to Linux. But Linux is not an edge / IoT platform by any stretch of the imagination. Micro RTOS is closer, but still overkill for embedded Wi-Fi. Specifically for Wi-Fi, LWIP is -the- stack to use for embedded TCP/IP. It is under 30K with full TCP/IP and offers everything you need. Then there is COAP or MQTT,…
I remember using Teensy based on AT90USB1286 microcontroller for 4 quadrant 3phase AC motor torque control. Worked like a charm. Glad to hear they're stilll in business.
The idea is to run these 3phase AC motors off DC