I don't think my club would approve a purchase of 5-10 of the $89 beagleBone and I cannot think of an embedded application complex enough to require embedded Linux.
I don't think anyone's mentioned it yet but what about the humble Nintendo Gameboy SP, it uses an Arm7, has lcd built in, sound, buttons, expansion port and com port, what more could anyone want?
if you use an NDS you get Arm9 too and wifi plus their free because i bet everybody or their kids have a least one in the house laying dormant and not used, I've been dabbling with them for a while
There is tons of info on the web
www.gbadev.org is just one refrence
orangeLearner:
Yes, the Raspberry Pi would be an option if someone could actually obtain one, let alone ten for a workshop. And as far as I know it is being marketed as a cheap computer, not an embedded platform. I also read that the main controller on it has no official documentation, so I will have to wait a few more months for people to hack it before that becomes an option.
What information did you find lacking in the datasheet for the Rasberry Pi's ARM? It fully documents the peripherals, GPIOs, I2C bus, SPI bus, etc. Was it the GPU you wanted docs on?
What information did you find lacking in the datasheet for the Rasberry Pi's ARM
Personally, I found a complete lack of any information about current source and sink capabilities of the GPIO pins. This is vital for use as an embedded controller.
Grumpy_Mike:
What information did you find lacking in the datasheet for the Rasberry Pi's ARM
Personally, I found a complete lack of any information about current source and sink capabilities of the GPIO pins. This is vital for use as an embedded controller.
Well I was responding to the OPs claim that there was no documentation for the board, but for details like sink and source you can visit the Pi wiki here RPi Low-level peripherals - eLinux.org, or see the Addendum here http://www.scribd.com/doc/91353537/GPIO-Pads-Control. So the current handling is configurable from 2mA up to 16mA which is not bad for an ARM. The wiki looks like a great resource for low level hacking.
Still waiting for my Pi to arrive... maybe this month.
Still waiting for my Pi to arrive... maybe this month.
I got an email saying mine would be delivered in the week starting 21st.
OK on the data sheet fragment but it is hardly official and there are no GPIO port distribution limits, can they all drive at full power? What is the slew rate limited output actually limited to?
I wonder how long before some one actually gets hold of a data sheet?
The STM 32 Discovery Board is available complete with a USB port for code... for $16 or $17 dollars from Newark.
The board is complete with an IDE and sample code downloadable from ST Micro... I just got mine in the mail on Tuesday.
I was looking for the shipping date for my Pi board... Late July (29) or early August. There was a Ti MSP430 Dev board as well...
for $4.75... W / 2 Processors... both are of course optimized for C and both come with compilers available as GCC distro's
as well as the big money Keil and CCS ? compilers as 'available' options. Go Check them out if you can't figure out what else to
with your Arduino.
Doc.
This one should be "interesting": Freescale Freedom eval platform
westfw:
This one should be "interesting": Freescale Freedom eval platform
I just an email from Element 14 that you can pre-order the Freedom-KL257 for $13 + s/h: http://www.element14.com/community/community/knode/dev_platforms_kits/element14_dev_kits/kinetis_kl2_freedom_board?ICID=hp_freedombanner&CMP=EMC-PRDE-80612.
Of course this is just the raw board. Presumably you would need some sort of RTOS infrastructure to actually run on the board. Its interesting, that several of these embedded boards have pins arranged to be Arduino compatible, since Arduino certainly has the mindshare for consumer embedded programming. I suspect if the Due doesn't come out soon, it may be the Rasberry-pi, Cortex, etc. boards will get the mindshare for the next generation of developers.
The freescale thing is 1 extra MSP430 chis an extra crystal (32Khz?) and a PCB about the same size as an Umo/Mega board with a usb thing and one other 50 - 60 pin 10 mm chip on the side of the board marked emulation and the 20 pin MSP430 Evaluation Chip in a socket... looks interesting... but I don't yet know enough to use it... It was inexpensive and looked like something I''d do If I couldn't sleep one night.
Doc
Checkout this ARM11 board at http://www.arm9board.net/sel/prddetail.aspx?id=348&pid=200
The provided documentations and source code should be of great help for your studying & teaching project
the Freedom-KL257
The KL25 (the chip) is highly anticipated. It is a strong competitor against those low energy products from EM.
Man I'm glad I'm not in the business of trying to sell a full-featured ARM board, how the heck would you compete with the stuff coming out these days?
Rob
That's the dilemma for all ARM licensees: you cannot afford to play, and you cannot afford not to play.
Well someone will get it right sooner or later, just as Arduino did for the 8 bit AVR world. 
Lefty