freeSoC and freeSoC Mini • Hacker News Board

Re: freeSoC and freeSoC Mini

#31

Post by jwatte » Sun, Sep 30, 2012, 7:50 AM UTC

shadowmint wrote: post #8

forgottenpaswrd wrote: post #6

The best Microcontroller? Does it works on Linux or mac?. No. It that software opensource? No Why then I should choose this thing instead of more powerful and closed micros like this?: http://www.microchip.com/stellent/idcplg?IdcService=SS_GET_P...

I think we can all agree that the arduino IDE is a terrible piece of software. It works... on most platforms. It's not bloated. It's kind of documented. That's about all the good you can say about it. ...but I have to agree, sounds like this is a neat platform, but if I can't write, compile and deploy code to it, what's the point? Is it really that hard to provide a tool chain that lets you cross compile binaries for…

Because good programmers are hard to find, and hardware companies sell more if they can convince EE design managers that their software is so easy, even the outsourced interns can be productive with it. Everything becomes crappy, because most people don't want to wait longer and pay more for quality.

Re: freeSoC and freeSoC Mini

#32

Post by jessedhillon » Sun, Sep 30, 2012, 9:05 AM UTC

jmole wrote: post #27

tibbon wrote: post #3

To sum up the pain points that this is fixing: - More pins, enabling more input/output. While there are some projects that only need a few pins, larger ones like big interactive light installations benefit from more - Almost all pins are analog or digital compatible, with a few high current digital ones - Compatible with Arduino header boards - Better IDE - Included ADC (two types, one can drive CD-quality audio), DA…

Hey All, Jon Moeller here. Thanks for all the support so far, I've received just under 20 backers from direct referrals from here, and I really appreciate it. This is a great summary of the pain points I'm trying to address. I really can't emphasize enough how revolutionary the PSoC Creator IDE is. I've been using it for the past three years, and it FAR exceeds any other MCU development environment I've ever used. (i…

I took a components design course 5+ years ago, but I haven't done any hardware work since. This project looks really exciting to me, but can you explain some of these features and why they matter?

For example, what is a digital-compatible pin? What makes a pin digital capable, versus analog? And what are some of these serial port limitations mentioned in the project description?

Re: freeSoC and freeSoC Mini

#33

Post by gamegod » Sun, Sep 30, 2012, 10:56 AM UTC

I really, really dig this idea. There's a handful of little hardware projects I've wanted to do with an Arduino or the like, but I've found that if you've got slightly different peripheral requirements, it's difficult to find one of these boards that will fit the bill. The idea of being able to significantly change the functionality of the hardware pins without doing loads of work is fantastic.

One minor gripe would be higher precision DACs (only 8-bit?), though the ADCs look great. The DACs would be a problem for audio, though the ADCs would be good for the lab.