Found this neat little part last week... dual-output 5v and 3.3v linear regulator.
When I found it, there were a few left in stock, so I ordered all of them. By the time I placed the order, they were gone. NBD, last buy date of 5/31. Got an email today that it was NLA and so my order was cancelled.
Maaaaaaan... I already made a PCB footprint for it and everything. ><
This happens far too often. I've bought a lot of parts from Digikey, but I'm no pro engineer. Based on the number of emails I get about part EOL, I can only imagine how real this issue can be for products in production...
This is exactly one the things that pisses me off about the electronics field these days, I design stuff and before I even get PCBs made there are 4 similar products on Kickstarter or the component is superseded.
After several goes at some SAM3 designs I got sick of all the new ARM boards coming out so I'm about to have a board delivered based on the mega2560, I figure that's a very popular chip and in most cases just as useful as an ARM, and hopefully it's going to be around for a while although Atmel must be thinking about dumping 8-bitters I reckon.
Who knows. 8-bit micros are still very relevant it would seem, although the 2560 in particular is kind of an odd duck, being the flagship Mega in terms of peripherals and storage, but topping out at 16MHz. A fact I didn't realize as I paired the 640 with a UART-friendly 18.xMHz crystal for this very same design actually.
I do wish they would revamp the Tiny / Mega line to run at 20MHz+ from 3.3 - 5v. Probably too much of a commodity line to make it worth the trouble though. I really should dip my toes into other vendors' pools, but ehhhh... lazy.
Happen to know what it uses for a compiler? From a PDF I found, it looks like the official IDE solution is based on Eclipse. I'm more of a vi / Kate kinda guy. I use Atmel Studio sometimes but I'm starting to lose patience with it trying to "fix" things as I type. (I can't count how many times I've ended up with closing parentheses in the wrong place because of this.)
If there's a gcc chain for the LPC, it looks like the 4078 might be exactly what I need.... Four or five UARTS that can do SPI and Ethernet, specifically... The Mega640 can do this with a WizNet 5300 on the side. USB and a higher clock speed would be a nice bonus. Close to the same cost as the Mega 640, saves the cost of a Wiz5300, although I suspect it's BYOPHY.
Correct, but AFAIK it uses GCC under the hood so maybe you can go retro
The LPCxpresso forum is pretty good although not a patch on this one (but then what is), dunno if you can get an LPCXpresso board for the 4078 but if you can that would be a cheap way to start. They do have one 4000-series board, just can't remember which chip it uses.
Nice, but a bit anemic on the current output. My device will have something like 20 LEDs in total, so <100mA per rail could be a problem. They're mostly activity indicators, so probably not all of them will be lit at any given time, but it's also a real possibility that they will.
I chose a TI dual-out adjustable switching regulator since, if I have to redesign the power supply anyway, I might as well shoot for a wider range of input voltages. shrug
Now I'm torn over with whether I should stick to the Mega processor or give this NXP thingy a try. ] If anyone knows any good impatient newbie day-one type stuff (YT, blog posts, whatever) for the LPC, that would be swell.
If anyone knows any good impatient newbie day-one type stuff (YT, blog posts, whatever) for the LPC, that would be swell.