[sdiy] Microchip DSP kit $60 > AVR32

[Eric Brombaugh]

Gabriel Lindeborg wrote:
> Or you could go the ARM32 way, seems to a very interesting uC with good 
> tools (as always with Atmel), USB 2.0, AC97, Audio DAC and so on...
> Anyone doing anything SDIYish with it?

I'm curious about ARM32 - I've only heard of this in the context of the 
arm32 port of NetBSD, which is really just a port to the standard ARM 
architecture. Perhaps you mean 32-bit ARM, which both the ARM7 and ARM9 
architectures are.

Quibbling about terminology aside, yes - ARM processors are ideal for 
SDIY. The Atmel AT91SAM7SXX parts which you alluded to are particularly 
interesting since they're relatively inexpensive ($8 in small quantity) 
and have decent memory and handy peripherals, including a USB 2.0 
compliant device port (not high-speed though), an I2S audio codec 
interface (not actually an on-chip DAC), 10-bit ADC, as well as the 
normal timers, UARTs, SPI and I2C. And they come in 48- and 64-pin LQFPs 
that are pretty easy to build with. Software tools run the gamut from 
freeware GCC toolchains (some considerable user assembly required), 
low-cost IDEs from the likes of Rowley, all the way up to multi-thousand 
dollar pro tools from Keil and IAR.

The other nice thing about ARM is that it's multi-vendor supported. You 
can get ARM-based MCUs from

Analog Devices
Atmel
Freescale
Intel
NXP
Oki
Samsung
ST
TI

with different flavors of peripherals. The ADI ADuC parts are pretty 
neat in that they have 4 on-chip 12-bit DACs which would be pretty 
useful for CVs.

One great example of this is the Make Controller 
(http://www.makingthings.com/products/KIT-MAKE-CTRL) which is 
open-source, tailored for DIY appllications and can be hooked to Max/MSP.

So, yes: ARM processors are great for SDIY applications. They're a bit 
more expensive than PIC processors, and the development tools take a bit 
more effort to set up though, so it seems they're not as popular as the 
more low-end devices.

Eric