Ulta low power TI LaunchPad

[wlanboy]

I want to point your interest to this little board:



The TI MSP-EXP430F5529LP - for $12.99.

It is a USB-enabled and USB-powered MSP430F5529 16-bit MCU.
– 25-MHz System Clock
– 1.8-V to 3.6-V operation
– 128KB flash, 8KB RAM
– Five timers
– Up to four serial interfaces (SPI, UART, I2C)
– 12-bit analog-to-digital converter
– Analog comparator

And Anaren is offering a ZigBee Addon-Board for the TI LaunchPad too.


The user guide can be found here.

The Ecosystem is quite grown - there are a ton of addons available.

Might be worth to spend some time.

 

[Virtovo]

I want to point your interest to this little board:



The TI MSP-EXP430F5529LP - for $12.99.

It is a USB-enabled and USB-powered MSP430F5529 16-bit MCU.


– 25-MHz System Clock


– 1.8-V to 3.6-V operation


– 128KB flash, 8KB RAM


– Five timers


– Up to four serial interfaces (SPI, UART, I2C)


– 12-bit analog-to-digital converter


– Analog comparator

And Anaren is offering a ZigBee Addon-Board for the TI LaunchPad too.

The user guide can be found here.

The Ecosystem is quite grown - there are a ton of addons available.

Might be worth to spend some time.

Thanks for the heads-up.  Looks like a new toy

 

[notFound]

Interesting, what can it do that an Arduino can't though? I haven't read the website properly, so I might be missing the point.

 

[ndelaespada]

nice, will check it out. thanks for sharing!

 

[willie]

MSP430 is a cute little processor.  Those boards never caught on that much, due to Arduino at the lower end and ARM boards above, but the TI's have their attractions.  43oh.com is the main hobby site for them, I think.  I tend to prefer really tiny boards like the Femtoduino (femtoduino.com), Adafruit Trinket, etc.

 

[wlanboy]

Interesting, what can it do that an Arduino can't though? I haven't read the website properly, so I might be missing the point.

Well it is cheaper :lol:



But the main difference is:

• Arduino is all about a nfinitiv loop running all the time - with a fixed MHz.
• Launchpad is all about interrupts and scaling speed (internal clock source) - so it does have power saving mode in which it uses virtually no power, but can wake up and return to full power in 1 microsecond.
  No event - no action.
  
  
  And of course 16 bit vs 8 bit of the Arduino.
  

 

[gxbfxvar]

I am fan of MSP430 boards from Olimex, for example https://www.olimex.com/Products/MSP430/Proto/MSP430-PG2231/

Also, once you get bored with Launchpad, you can try TI EZ430: http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/EZ430-Chronos

EZ430 is a wrist watch with msp430 processor and you can freely program it with GNU tools (gcc etc.).

 

[willie]

That table is actually for the older 430G2 Launchpad whose processor is in a DIP socket.  The new one (picture at the top of the thread) has a soldered-on processor with much more memory, 128k of flash and 8k of ram apparently.  The DIP socket one is nice for hardware projects since you can program and test with the launchpad board, then pull out the processor and plug it into your own circuit that might be on a solderless breadboard.  The new one obviously can run much bigger programs, but on the other hand it's competing with ARM boards including those using the Cortex M0+ which is in the same class of power consumption as the 430. 

One of the more interesting features of the 430 line (not the models on either Launchpad board though) is FRAM memory.  TI and Olimex both have boards with FRAM-based 430's.  FRAM (ferromagnetic ram) is non-volatile like flash, but is quickly rewriteable one byte at a time, like RAM.  It's still a bit slower than SRAM so you still need both kinds of memory, but it removes most of the annoyance of flash.

 

[wlanboy]

I am fan of MSP430 boards from Olimex, for example https://www.olimex.com/Products/MSP430/Proto/MSP430-PG2231/

Olimex is nice but I do prefer the eco-system of Arduino.