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I like the RP2040

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Re: I like the RP2040

#271

Post by uncletaco »

opello wrote: post #228
uncletaco wrote: post #148

RP2040 has single handedly reinvigorated a really niche market: custom controllers. Due to the wonderful work done on gp2040[1] which is open source game pad firmware, people can buy cheap, quality, fightsticks and leverless controllers for a lot cheaper than they can from vendors like Victrix or Razer. Not only that but because its open sourced the hobbyist side of the controller community are building RP2040 pcbs t…

Doesn't this discount things like the Brook boards (e.g., Zero-Pi[1]) that came before? I only take issue with "single handedly" because it seems not quite true to the history here. [1] https://www.brookaccessory.com/detail/53169470/

It doesn't. Brook boards always added like an extra $100 dollars to any custom or DIY fight stick. The reinvigoration came because sticks that used to be $250 new are now closer to $100 and in some cases less, particularly leverless controllers. If you've heard of the Haute 42 or any of the countless leverless controllers that have been flooding Ali Express, Amazon, and other sites they're possible because of the firmware gp2040. For a lot of these new makers all they have to do is get the pcb printed and build an enclosure.

Re: I like the RP2040

#272

Post by uncletaco »

CarVac wrote: post #222
uncletaco wrote: post #148

RP2040 has single handedly reinvigorated a really niche market: custom controllers. Due to the wonderful work done on gp2040[1] which is open source game pad firmware, people can buy cheap, quality, fightsticks and leverless controllers for a lot cheaper than they can from vendors like Victrix or Razer. Not only that but because its open sourced the hobbyist side of the controller community are building RP2040 pcbs t…

Not to mention PhobGCC (I'm the lead dev) and its less-Gamecube-specific descendents such as ProGCC V3 and GC Ultimate and Phizard...

I'll mention it. PhobGCC is awesome and thank you for making it!

Re: I like the RP2040

#273

Post by kragen »

fleventynine wrote: post #267
kragen wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

none of this will be news to you , but it's probably of interest to other people reading the discussion. you can do stuff inside the interrupt handler itself, and while what you do there does have to be an event-driven explicit state machine, interrupts introduce two key differences: - the rest of your program doesn't have to be an explicit state machine; it can use structured control flow with nested loops and condi…

> the rest of your program doesn't have to be an explicit state machine; it can use structured control flow with nested loops and conditionals and subroutines This works well until the requirements change and you have to run two structured control flows simultaneously. If I find myself in such a situation and have no SRAM for a second thread, rust async may be the quickest way to accomplish the goal without a major r…

i don't have experience with rust async, although i used to maintain a csp protocol stack in python async, which is pretty similar, so tell me if this is wrong

i feel like the same kind of thing can happen even if you start entirely async, because something that was previously synchronous may have to become asynchronous, which leads to having to revalidate all your concurrency assumptions all the way up its (static) call stack. wherever you were depending on not getting preempted, you need to change the code to not depend on that anymore. but if ram is so tight that you're concerned about the sram for a second stack, maybe that's a pretty small task rather than a major rewrite

that said, i don't recall having actually had that problem

Re: I like the RP2040

#274

Post by krisoft »

HyulianGrader wrote: post #134
krisoft wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe look at the ESP32 chip's datasheet? [1] This is the first sentence in it: "ESP32 is a single 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi-and-Bluetooth combo chip designed with the TSMC low-power 40 nm technology." That's the chip. Not the development board. 1: https://www.espressif.com/sites/default/files/documentation/...

What part of that contradicts my comment? To be clear, GP is the one saying the ESP32 is more than just the chip itself, complete with battery controller and camera connector.

Hmm. You are right.

On a second re-read it seems we agree.

Re: I like the RP2040

#275

Post by dragontamer »

kragen wrote: post #257
dragontamer wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume that most people's use of FRAM is when its integrated into TI's MSP430 microcontrollers IE: if FRAM comes free with your MCU, might as well use it and take advantage of its benefits. For example: MSP430FR4132, just picking one such MCU off of Digikey ( https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/texas-instruments... ) ------ Most of what I know of FRAM comes from TI's marketing pages. https://www.ti.com/docum…

probably so, but crote was talking about external fram chips the msp430fr4132 you linked costs 160¢ in quantity 35, which is actually considerably cheaper than comparable flash-based chips like the msp430f233 https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/texas-instruments... which is 500¢ in quantity 25. so that's maybe one reason people would use fram: evidently it's cheaper than nor? but i'm pretty sure there are μcs…

AVR64DD14 is $1.20 qty25 for 64kB of Flash and 8kB of SRAM (and quite a bit more analog features, like dual-power supplies, more ACs, DAC, Differential ADC...).

So I'm pretty sure NOR Flash remains quite cheap. TI's MSP430 are all cheapest with FRAM though, so your question is curious. I admit I don't know where to go or how to investigate your question however. I don't really use MSP430 myself, I just know thats what is commonly associated with FRAM in the literature I've read.

Re: I like the RP2040

#276

Post by kragen »

dragontamer wrote: post #275
kragen wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

probably so, but crote was talking about external fram chips the msp430fr4132 you linked costs 160¢ in quantity 35, which is actually considerably cheaper than comparable flash-based chips like the msp430f233 https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/texas-instruments... which is 500¢ in quantity 25. so that's maybe one reason people would use fram: evidently it's cheaper than nor? but i'm pretty sure there are μcs…

AVR64DD14 is $1.20 qty25 for 64kB of Flash and 8kB of SRAM (and quite a bit more analog features, like dual-power supplies, more ACs, DAC, Differential ADC...). So I'm pretty sure NOR Flash remains quite cheap. TI's MSP430 are all cheapest with FRAM though, so your question is curious. I admit I don't know where to go or how to investigate your question however. I don't really use MSP430 myself, I just know thats wha…

huh, I wonder why it wasn't coming up in my search

just as a perspective point on 'quite cheap', nor is still about a thousand times more expensive than nand

i would never buy from ti. they hate hobbyists and have since at least the 70s. they put limor fried on a blacklist

Re: I like the RP2040

#277

Post by 15155 »

antirez wrote: post #15

I switched from ESP32 to the RP2040 because it's a much more reliable and documented device. My only concern right now with the RP2040 is that there are many ESP32 models with SPIRAM but it's not so simple to find a SPIRAM equipped RP2040 board. To be honest, given that the C development environment of the RP2040 is so good, you can make good use of the memory, but when one wants to develop a large MicroPython projec…

The RP2040 only has one QSPI port.

JLC will assemble a RP2040 board for you for <$3/pc at quantities of 5.

Re: I like the RP2040

#278

Post by 15155 »

mdp2021 wrote: post #179
weinzierl wrote: post #171

I think the PIO state machines are pretty cool and relatively unique. I am also glad the Foundation resisted the temptation to market them as extra cores and sell the RP2040 as 10-core processor. When it comes to the Raspi Pico and similar devices[1], I think UF2 flashing is the best thing since sliced bread. This alone lowers the barrier for beginners significantly. Things I don't like: power consumption. But you ca…

> Things I don't like: power consumption I understand it could use ~0.08W, given it draws 3.3V at ~24mA... I am not a specialist, is that a lot? Ref.: https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/rp2040-thing-plus-hooku...

Ambiq Apollo4s run at Lots of variables go into this figure, but 24mA isn't great.

Re: I like the RP2040

#279

Post by 15155 »

ndiddy wrote: post #19
cide1 wrote: post #3

The lack of security features really limits where this can be used in commercial designs.

In general, read-out protection provides a very limited level of protection that I wouldn't rely on to stop cloning. There's quite a few firms that will extract the firmware from protected microcontrollers for a couple thousand dollars (i.e. https://russiansemiresearch.com/ ) which is a drop in the bucket considering the potential profit from industrialized cloning. Lots of microcontroller series also have exploits t…

Crypto key storage fuses and high-assurance boot are often more important than readout protection.

Re: I like the RP2040

#280

Post by 15155 »

arlort wrote: post #181
amelius wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that already covered by FPGAs? I mean, it is just a way of configuring ports. And FPGAs are much broader (also configuring computation).

The same features of pio can be implemented via FPGA, but it's a lot more complicated to do so, and probably you won't find FPGAs as cheap as on the pi

This core is probably less than 1000 lines of RTL (the verification suite probably being far more.)
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