EIED Online Minis Part 2

Oct. 31, 2006

Kits are coming fast and furious. They are also getting smaller and cheaper with even better software tools. Embedded Technology Editor Bill Wong takes a quick look at a new crop of microcontroller development tools and add-ons that fit in the palm of you

William G. Wong

I definitely need more shelf space in the lab. Development kits are coming out of the woodwork. On the plus side, they are getting smaller and cheaper. They are also including top notch development tools. The next area to tackle is the quality of sample and training materials but that is another story.

Four tiny boxes that showed up recently include three microcontroller development kits and one add-on. Check out the Related Links for detailed coverage of each one of these.

Silicon Labs Does It Again With New ToolStick
QuickFilter Melds Its SavFIRe Digital Filter With Texas Instrument's MSP-eZ430U
Luminary Micro Delivers Low Cost Kit To Match $1 ARM-based Microcontroller
Microchip Delivers PIC Development Tool For $49

The trend of these small, USB-based development platforms started with the $11 Silicon Labs ToolStick (Fig. 1) (Sticking It To The Developer, ED Online ID 12142). The trend gained a split personality with Texas Instrument's MSP-eZ430U (Fig. 2) (EiED Online>> Mid-Range Micro Kits, ED Online ID 12991) that allows the target MSP430 microcontroller to be removed and plugged into a carrier board with additional peripherals.

QuickFilter doesn't sell microcontrollers. It sells chips that like its SavFIRe digital filter chip that can be used with microcontrollers like Texas Instruments' MSP430. The $20 MSP-eZ430U was an ideal target for a demo board. Just pop out the MSP430 target board and swap in the QuickFilter target board, complete with its own MSP430, and you have a new target platform.

Microchip's PICkit2 is a more conventional platform but it cuts the price of the debugging tool significantly. Luminary Micro uses a single board but takes the debugging tool a step further by allowing the USB-based JTAG debug unit to be used with external microcontrollers. Now it is no longer a matter of using one of these inexpensive kits to start with and then having to turn to a more expensive solution just to develop your own hardware.

As with the other mini reviews, these are short and to the point so check out the other links for more info on other development tools.

Related Links QuickFilter
www.quickfiltertech.com

Luminary Micro
www.luminarymicro.com

Microchip
www.microchip.com

Silicon Labs
www.silabs.com

Texas Instruments
www.ti.com

About the Author

William G. Wong | Senior Content Director - Electronic Design and Microwaves & RF

I am Editor of Electronic Design focusing on embedded, software, and systems. As Senior Content Director, I also manage Microwaves & RF and I work with a great team of editors to provide engineers, programmers, developers and technical managers with interesting and useful articles and videos on a regular basis. Check out our free newsletters to see the latest content.

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Check out my blog, AltEmbedded on Electronic Design, as well as his latest articles on this site that are listed below.

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I earned a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Masters in Computer Science from Rutgers University. I still do a bit of programming using everything from C and C++ to Rust and Ada/SPARK. I do a bit of PHP programming for Drupal websites. I have posted a few Drupal modules.

I still get a hand on software and electronic hardware. Some of this can be found on our Kit Close-Up video series. You can also see me on many of our TechXchange Talk videos. I am interested in a range of projects from robotics to artificial intelligence.