From: DJ D. <dj...@de...> - 2007-10-29 00:27:09
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"Michael Caughey" <mi...@ca...> writes: > But then you need a programmer $99, I make my own, it's usually just a serial port and a few gpio. My furnace project, for example, can reprogram all the R8C chips on the fly right from the gumstix. > and an IDE $200 to $500, Most MCUs are supported by free software, meaning both free as in speech and free as in beer. > But I think the nice thing about having options is we > all consider our options and make the best choice for us. Yup :-) > I know I went down that street and spent much more then I did on the > GumStix avenue. I like the R8C/M16C/M32C family, because programming is simple (serial port and two GPIO) and the tools are free. To put a single R8C in a project costs a TOTAL of about $5. That's for C/C++/Asm, too. And the M32C family isn't unique; most MCUs are simple to program once the specs are available. For my furnace project, the TOTAL parts list for programming all five R8C chips from the gumstix was a single 8:1 analog mux to choose which R8C's Tx line was connected to the gumstix's Rx line. I build the flash images on my PC (free tools), scp those to the gumstix (I use that to support a web server, ssh, ntp, etc, plus run the master control algorithm), and the R8C programmer runs on the gumstix itself. |