Texas Instruments "Launch Pad" uC Dev Kit!

Just saw this on HAD.

Texas Instruments is trying to jump into the hobbyist market and claim some of the AVR / PIC / Basic Stamp users. The just released the Launch Pad dev Kit. It included a uC board, 2 extra uC's, USB cable, 2 IDE's and a USB Cable. Here is the big thing that sold me. It cost $4.30 shipped.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TI

What is LaunchPad?

LaunchPad is an easy-to-use development tool intended for beginners and experienced users alike for creating microcontroller-based applications. At $4.30, the LaunchPad offers everything you need to get started with your projects.

The LaunchPad development kit is a part of the MSP430 Value Line series. LaunchPad has an integrated DIP target socket that supports up to 20 pins, allowing MSP430 Value Line devices to be dropped into the LaunchPad board. Also, an on-board flash emulation tool allows direct interface to a PC for easy programming, debugging, and evaluation. Included are free and downloadable software development environments for writing and debugging software. LaunchPad can be used to create interactive solutions thanks to its on-board pushbuttons, LEDs, and extra input/output pins for easy integration of external devices.

Why LaunchPad?
The LaunchPad is an easy-to-use, affordable, and scalable introduction to the world of microcontrollers and the MSP430 family.

Easy-to-use – LaunchPad includes all of the hardware and software needed to get started. Open source projects and code examples help users get up and running quickly.

Affordable – For $4.30, the LaunchPad includes a development board, 2 programmable MSP430 microcontrollers, mini-USB cable, PCB connectors for expandability, external crystal for increased clock accuracy, and free & downloadable software integrated development environments (IDEs) – everything you need to get started today.

Scalable – The LaunchPad is a simple introduction to the MSP430 microcontroller family. As application requirements change, programs developed on the LaunchPad can be migrated to higher end MSP430 devices.

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So I ordered one and am thinking of ordering a few more for a giveaway or something on my site. at $4.30 its worth it for the USB Cable, header pins and uCs alone.

Link? I would like to check this out...

Oh my bad, I forgot the most important part.

http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index....+launchpadwiki

Wow! That price is incredible! When you get it you gotta do a review of it.

I haven't ordered it yet. While I was posting this I was waiting on the order page to load. It is still timing out for me. Kinda like sparkfun on free day. But I will pick up one . @ $4.30 its less than what I usually spend on lunch.

If they do this right, I could see this really taking off if for no other reason than it's a LOT cheaper than any of the alternatives. Plus, TI probably makes a lot of the chips that other AVR boards use anyways, so getting it straight from the manufacturer will be cheaper in the long run too.

Well all of the uC I am seeing listed only do 1 and 2k flash so that's not a lot. My current project is using about 12k and the code is as clean as one can make it.

it looks like its got room for a uC that's 6-pins bigger, would that hold the memory you're looking for?

No. The whole uC line the board is designed for only does 1k and 2k flash.

ahhh ok I get it

Ordered mine. I noticed the e-store changed from TIe-store to either "Arrow" or "Mouser". Arrow was down, so I ordered from Mouser. It's backordered, so I'll get it when they do. But, it's bought and paid for, anyway.

Ok, so I finally got around to ordering mine. They have around 7 different distributers carrying it now, but since they're all backordered, I went ahead and ordered mine directly from TI. Now, annoying thing here, TI requires that you put in a company. ..and the page errors out if you put in "n/a"... -_^ ...did it never occur to the site designers that hobbyists might want to buy stuff from them? I went with the slight derivation of "na" instead, and it was fine with that, it's just annoying that they require that I put in anything. :mad:

What can you do with 2k? What kinda projects would this be be good for? I'm not saying "oh geez, what good is 2k" I'm saying, "I don't know anything about these things and wanna try it out and need to know what it would be good for." lol

Well, what I have in mind is to use it to time the capacitor charging circuit and discharge sequence for the coilgun I'm working on. Even if I end up having to use 2 it'll still be cheaper than using an AVR (not much, granted, but still :P ).

You can blink some LEDS with 2k of flash, COntrol RGB LEDs, maybe do some simple servo control. I too have a few of these on the way.

The limiting factor in my opinion is the 100 bytes of RAM thant he flash, a good program will take less than 2kB of flash depending on how it's designed.

EDIT: And the scale of the program :P

There were some questions in the open source community that were brought up over and over again about the LaunchPad so I sent a few of them to TI and just posted the reply on my site.

http://themakersworkbench.com/?q=node/394

Great to hear about the future uC line expansion! Especially if they maintain the same prices. :D What they mention about the unversality of the board is one thing I really like about it as well. A lot of Arduinos/clones/compatible, like they said, solder the chip on the board, so you have to have additional equipment to roll a production chip. This, it looks like you just pop the chip out, and stick it in your final circuit. :D

This seems like an awesome deal, especially for someone only mildly interested in this sort of thing like myself. I've always been like, well those look cool and maybe I could use them for some automization/motorization projects but just never could justify buying one personally. At $4.30 that's an acceptible risk to me to try the hobby and not feel shortchanged if I decide it isn't for me.

Anyone have theirs yet? I thought they were supposed to be in stock by now, but I haven't gotten mine or heard from them (I bought it straight from TI), and according to their online check, they have to record of an order with my account. ..I'm gonna contact them today to see what's going on, but I was wondering if anyone else had gotten theirs to see if maybe they're just still out of stock.

Not I. nore have I received the ones for the contest.

The onboard memory is about on par with similar MCUs. Some MSP430s have as much as 18KB RAM and 256KB ROM. Besides, you can use SPI and I2C to interface with as much extra ROM as you like, it'll cost about the same $ whether it's integrated or discrete.

I think a real drawback is that these are all low-speed parts; most spec out around 4-16MHz, a few as high as 25MHz. Judging by TI's offerings, they're already factory sorted by speed so I doubt they will scale up much and it's doubtful that individual parts can sustain any overclocking. (Yeah, I'm a villain, I often try to overclock my MCUs and PLDs.)

I am impressed by the remarkably low power consumption, especially in sleep/standby modes. And every MSP430 comes with fairly decent ADC ... you could probably use one to build a 200KHz 10-bit digital oscilloscope for less than 20 bucks. The MSP430 parts themselves are a little bit more expensive than some of the competition, but they'll probably drop over time, and besides $5 isn't a death blow.

An important detail I notice is that this development board appears to mount a 20-pin socket. This severely limits the number of MSP430 parts it will accept (mostly to just the 14-DIP packages), so all the MSP430s with juicier specs or more I/O lines simply aren't compatible unless you use a better development board. $4.30 for a reprogrammable USB device is pretty hard to beat.

I have no experience with TI parts. I assume they use a unique instruction set. How does their software (IDE, compiler, etc) compare against, say, MPLAB or Parallax?

I got mine a couple weeks ago.... Now I just need to figure out wth I'm going to do with it...

I have no idea how it compares to pics or stamps. I am an arduino man and am only familiar with AVRs and the Arduino Language (a mix of C+ and Processing)

We speak different languages.

I have been tempted by AVR, Arduino, Atmel before ... just as with the MSP430 now ... as long as the parts I work with now can still do what I need to do then I'll avoid diving into the learning curve for an alternative. (PIC, dsPIC, Propeller, ARM, and xPLD cover a pretty wide range and aren't gonna go obsolete for a while, so I'm good for now.)

Arduino is pretty simple. Here is some sample code for the accelerometer I am playing with.

Code:

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#include <Wire.h>

#define MMA7660addr  0x4c
#define MMA7660_X    0x00
#define MMA7660_Y    0x01
#define MMA7660_Z    0x02
#define MMA7660_TILT  0x03
#define MMA7660_SRST  0x04
#define MMA7660_SPCNT 0x05
#define MMA7660_INTSU 0x06
#define MMA7660_MODE  0x07
#define MMA7660_SR    0x08
#define MMA7660_PDET  0x09
#define MMA7660_PD    0x0A


class Acceleration
{
 public:
 char x;
 char y;
 char z;
};


void mma7660_init(void)
{
  Wire.begin();
  Wire.beginTransmission( MMA7660addr);
  Wire.send(MMA7660_MODE); 
  Wire.send(0x00);
  Wire.endTransmission();

  Wire.beginTransmission( MMA7660addr);
  Wire.send(MMA7660_SR); 
  Wire.send(0x07);  //  Samples/Second Active and Auto-Sleep Mode
  Wire.endTransmission();

  Wire.beginTransmission( MMA7660addr);
  Wire.send(MMA7660_MODE); 
  Wire.send(0x01);//active mode
  Wire.endTransmission();

}

void setup()
{
  mma7660_init();        // join i2c bus (address optional for master)
  Serial.begin(9600);  // start serial for output
}

void Ecom()
{
  unsigned char val[3];
  int count = 0;
  val[0] = val[1] = val[2] = 64;
  Wire.requestFrom(0x4c, 3);    // request 3 bytes from slave device 0x4c
 
  while(Wire.available()) 
  {
    if(count < 3)
      while ( val[count] > 63 )  // reload the damn thing it is bad
        {
          val[count] = Wire.receive();

        }
        count++;
  }

  // transform the 7 bit signed number into an 8 bit signed number.
  Acceleration ret;

  ret.x = ((char)(val[0]<<2))/4;
  ret.y = ((char)(val[1]<<2))/4;
  ret.z = ((char)(val[2]<<2))/4;
      Serial.print("x = ");
    Serial.println(ret.x,DEC);  // print the X reading

        Serial.print("y = ");
    Serial.println(ret.y,DEC);  // print the Y reading

        Serial.print("z = ");
    Serial.println(ret.z,DEC);  // print the Z reading
}

char reading = 0;

void loop()
{
    Ecom();

  Serial.println("*************");
  delay(500);
}

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Also, if you feel like it, any Arduino uC will take straight C...though that would probably make for a steeper learning curve if you're not already familiar with AVR architecture.. :think:

The code looks somewhat PIC-like, yes very straightforward. My googling shows that there's plenty of cross-platform compilers and code converters, although obviously they won't usually optimize low-level code written for another device.

Adopting a new programmable logic architecture always has a little learning curve, lots of searching and reading, some experimenting with the parts themselves and their capabilities, some frustration in porting over your code libraries as needed, and evaluating whatever PC software choice are available. That's all expected, and not much of an issue anyhow since the more you know the easier it gets to adapt to knowing more.

The greater issue is hardware tools ... spending some serious money buying new boards (or spending time building your own). True, for <$5 this dev board is fairly robust (integrated USB controller!), but no doubt if I seriously adopt this architecture I'd quickly want better boards which can run better-rated MCUs. This board can handle DIP20s but from what I see the bulk of the compatible MSP430 choices are DIP14s ... that's just not enough I/O to do anything much, especially after SLI/I2C eats pins for flash memory or comm protocol interfaces.

I still might actually try it out: for ~$20 I could get two boards and 2-3 MSP430 parts. I can always just use them "as-is" in some embedded project or other and move on if I decide not to stick with it. Having already invested in the platforms I already use, it just might not be worth more than a learning experience. Learning is never "useless" - even if I never use these devices again - but I could perhaps more productively spend time learning more about the Propeller and Cortex parts I regularly use. I can't even remember all the "one-shot" oddball devices (literally dozens) that I've had to work with in the past (I get stuck using whatever devices the engineers or clients choose, or whatever their predecessors chose) ... that's how I was introduced to Propeller in fact, but most of these parts were a bit of a nuisance to work with (for whatever reason; some are obsolete or overspecialized, some costly, some poorly supported or unpopular, some just plain sucky or difficult to use) then quickly abandoned with some relief after the job was completed.

The same logic applies to Arduino. I'm constantly intrigued by parts and projects I see appearing as it becomes more widely adopted. Circuit Cellar, Nuts&Volts, Servo, and SparkFun all show a heavy shift towards Arduino, they're even beginning to displace the PIC/PICBASIC noob parts I learned on. Without Arduino I'm increasingly limiting options or needing to adapt them... I'm beginning to feel a little left out :s

w00tz! I just got the shipping confirmation email! So, fedex picked it at 1:40pm today (well, Monday), and it should be here....today by 10am? Wow! Less than 24 hour shipping from Texas! :D Pictures will be posted tomorrow.

Yay! Came in the mail today! :D For some reason TI sent it 'priority overnight'...not entirely sure why they did that but I'm not complaining.

So, pics. :D

Simple FedEx bubble-envelope-wrap-thingy:

The actual box. Looks nice, almost like they expect it to be seen by someone who hasn't bought it already. :whistler:

Inside:

And the included parts:
launchpad dev board
usb cable
both pin and socket headers (you solder on whichever you want)
MS3V-T1R 32.768kHz crystal
MSP430G2211 (in separate packet)
MSP430G2231 (on the board)
2 stickers :D

And I happened to notice this. It's on the inside of the cardboard tube-roll that the three smaller packets are in. :D

Oh, and I love this quote from the quick-start booklet (emphasis theirs):

Quote:

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This evaluation board/kit is intended for ENGINEERING DEVELOPMENT, DEMONSTRATION, OR EVALUATION PURPOSES ONLY and is not considered by TI to be a finished end-product fit for general consumer use.

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...also, apparently if you use it in Japan you're supposed to use it in a shielded room, and only if you have obtained "the license of Test Radio Station". :?

interesting....

Just saw this...interesting expansion on its advertised abilities.
http://hackaday.com/2010/09/28/launc...ue-line-chips/

EDIT:
Doh, looks like you beat me to it.
http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/f...ad.php?t=24568

:D

Mine only came with one sticker. :?

I didn't know a "review" was expected, lol, or I woulda done it myself. Maybe next time.

...

Apparently the Japan Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications governs radio spectrum ... much like our FCCs do (FCC Part 15, for example). I will idly observe that the name of this Ministry suggests a cornucopiea of conspiracy theories, just for idle amusement.

I wouldn't be surprised if Japanese regulations about allowable EMI/RFI levels are far more complex, byzantine, and restrictive than Western rules. Or maybe this translation should instead read "shielded enclosure"?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Konrad

I didn't know a "review" was expected, lol, or I woulda done it myself.

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Eh, nobody else had, so I figured I'd throw some up. :D

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Konrad

I will idly observe that the name of this Ministry suggests a cornucopiea of conspiracy theories, just for idle amusement.

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Not really, that's just what they call their focus areas, like "department"s in the US.