[sdiy] ARM Dev Boards Possibly Lunatic Idea

[rsdio at audiobanshee.com]

Hi Scott,

Everything at Sparkfun is open hardware / open source. Their firmware is not permanently stored in the chip, so you can update anything that they can update.

If your only reason to choose the Tsunami is that is has a 40% higher clock speed, then that's not much of a reason. For pure speed, you would be better with a DSP like the TMS320 or SHARC, because those processors can handle more audio per clock cycle, with higher resolution, than an ARM instruction set. There are other platforms that combine DSP and ARM in a multi-core chip with higher clock speeds than even the Tsunami.

I believe that the real question you should be asking is which dev board has the best audio quality. There are many ways that these cheaper dev boards can sacrifice the audio quality, such as poor noise filtering, poor shielding, poor headroom for today's highly compressed audio, et cetera. Rather than focus on the clock speed, look for good audio interface hardware.

You can also get dev boards directly from Microchip, Texas Instruments, or Analog Devices and then you'll have full support for beginning a new project.

Basically, you have so many options these days that it's almost overwhelming.

Brian


On May 12, 2017, at 12:29 PM, Scott Gravenhorst wrote:
> Here's a possibly lunatic idea I've been mulling for awhile.
> 
> I was thinking that the Tsunami Super WAV Trigger Board has essentially everything I'd
> want on a dev board, including the Microchip (Atmel) ATSAMS70N20 ARM (and again, the
> only reason I'm interested in that particular chip is that the speed is almost 40%
> higher than the STmicro ones).  
> 
> What I first wondered is whether it would be possible to completely replace the program
> in it.  There is a firmware update function, but I doubt if that _completely_ erases and
> replaces the code.  If I'm not mistaken (from looking at the schemo and reading the
> datasheet) I might be able to program the board through the FTDI port on the board. 
> However, I'm not sure, so maybe someone here has advice.  Anyway, my whole idea was to
> buy a second WAV trigger and blow out the WAV trigger program and replace it with my own
> designs - and use it as a dev board.  It's a bit more expensive than the other
> selections we've discussed, but failing finding a dev board for ATSAMS70N20, if that
> could actually work, I wouldn't mind spending the money.  The development platform for
> the Microchip/Atmel parts is Atmel Studio, which itself is free, but I don't know if as
> you use it you find that it needs bits and pieces that cost money - can anyone say if
> that is true or not?
> 
> So is this total lunacy?
>