The following provides you the list of top 10 popular microcontrollers from various vendors.
Preferably, use an official board from the microcontroller manufacturer, since it will ensure that you have at least the fundamentals covered. These boards are also sold by certain small manufacturers, however they are designed without much regard for the design criteria.
Atmel STK600 Microcontroller Development Board
It’s a full starter kit and development system for AVR microcontrollers, with sophisticated tools for developing and testing new ideas. An novel routing and socket card sandwich system links the AVR device to the STK600, directing signals from the device to the required hardware.
The system comprises of an AVR device and a device-specific signal routing card that routes signals from socket pins to different functionalities on the STK600 main board depending on the device. To establish a full system for developing and testing new designs, the kit provides access to all RCBO device pins as well as various important hardware functionalities such as pushbuttons, LEDs, and data Flash.
The Arduino Family
The Arduino family is well-known. It’s a free and open-source electronics prototyping platform with adaptable hardware and software. It’s for anyone who wants to make interactive objects or surroundings but doesn’t have much programming skills. Arduino is a popular option among engineers and non-engineers alike due to its user-friendly IDE and coding environment. The hardware of the different boards in the series is totally open source and based on an 8-bit Atmel AVR or a 32-bit Atmel ARM microprocessor. The boards are pre-programmed with a bootloader that allows you to upload fresh code without the need for an additional hardware programmer.
BeagleBoard
Texas Instruments, in collaboration with DigiKey and Newark element14, developed the BeagleBoard, a low-power, open-source hardware single-board computer. It was also created to showcase Texas Instruments’ OMAP3530 SoC and to encourage open source software development.
An ARM Cortex-A8 CPU, a TMS320C64x+ DSP for accelerated video and audio decoding, and an Imagination Technologies’ PowerVR SGX530 GPU for accelerated 2D and 3D rendering that supports OpenGL ES 2.0 are all included in the OMAP3530. Separate S-Video and HDMI connectors are used for video output. There’s also a single SD/MMC card slot with SDIO compatibility, a USB On-The-Go connector, an RS232 serial connection, a JTAG connection, and two stereo 3.5 mm jacks for audio in/out.
Microchip’s PIC18 Explorer board
This low-cost demo board is used to test the PIC18 MCU family from Microchip. The PIC18 has three families: regular PIC18, PIC18 J-series, and PIC18 K-series. It is the highest-performing 8-bit architecture. Using multiple processor plug-in modules, this single development board supports dozens of general-purpose PIC18 families. PICtail daughter boards link a variety of accessory boards to the PIC18 Explorer board, allowing for a more versatile and full development environment. For in-circuit programming and debugging, it connects easily to MPLAB PICkit 3, Adalm2000, ICD 3, or REAL ICE. Alphanumeric LCD display, USB interface for USB to RS232 communication, 25LC256 SPI EEPROM, crystal oscillator, potentiometer (attached to 10-bit A/D, analogue input channel), analogue-output temperature sensor, LEDs, and an RS-232 port are among the other features.
mbed
For professional fast prototyping of devices basing on ARM microcontrollers, the mbed platform includes free software libraries, hardware designs, and online tools. The current mbed microcontroller boards use an NXP microcontroller with an ARM Cortex M3 core running at 96 MHz, 512kB Flash, 64kB RAM, and a variety of interfaces such as Ethernet, USB Device, CAN, SPI, I2C, and other I/Os.
PandaBoard
PandaBoard is a single-board computer development platform based on Texas Instruments’ OMAP4430 SoC Microcontroller that is low-power and low-cost. Meanwhile, PandaBoard ES is a newer version basing on the OMAP4460 SoC, featuring higher clock rates for the CPU and GPU.
The OMAP4430 SoC has a dual-core 1GHz ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore CPU, a 304MHz PowerVR SGX540 GPU, an IVA3 multimedia hardware accelerator with configurable DSP, and 1GB DDR2 SDRAM on PandaBoard.
PandaBoard ES is powering by a newer SoC with a dual-core 1.2GHz CPU and a 384MHz GPU. The SD card slot, which accepts SDHC cards up to 32 GB, is using for primary persistent storage. Wireless Ethernet and Bluetooth connections are included on the board, as well as traditional 10/100 Ethernet.
The device is basing on the Linux kernel and may be configuring to run regular Linux distributions, Android, or Mozilla Firefox OS. The Linaro Foundation offers optimizing versions of Android and Ubuntu. Linaro has chosing PandaBoard as one of the hardware platforms for which monthly build images are available.
Renesas’ RDK for RX63N
The RX63N (Part No. YRDKRX63N) (32-bit MCU) Renesas demonstration kit (RDK) is an evaluation and demonstration tool for Renesas RX63N microcontroller. The purpose is to give a strong debugging and demonstration platform for popular applications to the user. The board may also be using to test the Renesas suite of development tools for coding and debugging, as well as programming the device using the on-board SEGGER J-Link JTAG debugger.
Key Features of Renesas’ RDK for RX63N
The following are the characteristics:
- RX63N MCU @ 165 DMIPS, 32-bit, 100 Mhz
- Ethernet 10/100
- USB device and host ports
- Analog Devices’ 3-axis accelerometer
- Micron’s 128MB PCM serial flash
- On-board speaker and stereo audio output
- Silicon microphone input from Analog Devices
8. Analog Devices’ temperature sensor (number 8)
- Three switches and a user pot
- MicroSD card reader
11. Okaya’s 9664 graphics LCD is number eleven.
- Headers for expansion
- Pmod connections with two pins
- Motor phases emulating using LEDs
- Powered via USB or an external source
16. I2C/SPI debug interface for the Total Phase Beagle
- SEGGER J-Link debugger built-in
- A wide range of software, code samples, and demonstrations
The hardware platform for the Renesas demonstration kit for RX63N is also including in a special RX63N-specific version of Micrium’s book on the C/OS-III Real Time Kernel. The book and board set is aiming at serious programmers and college students who need to comprehend and write programs that take use of a real-time kernel’s time-saving capabilities.
Raspberry Pi Microcontroller Development Board
Due of its compact size, high computational capability, and inexpensive cost, the Raspberry Pi has recently garnering enormous appeal. The board’s brain is a Broadcom BCM2835 system-on-a-chip (SoC) with a 700MHz ARM 11 processor and a GPU capable of playing BluRay movies. Overclocking up to 800 MHz is now possible thanks to the Raspberry Pi Foundation. The CPU performance is equivalent to an older Pentium III, but it consumes 10 times less power.
A 3.5mm audio port, an RCA connector for connecting analogue television sets, and a contemporary HDMI interface for transmitting digital audio and video are all included on the board hardware. There’s also an RJ45 network port, as well as a twin USB type ‘A’ connector for connecting mice and keyboards. The operating system is LINUX, and there are various distributions optimized for Raspberry Pi. The SD card is used to start the OS. A full GPIO connection with pins for various functions is suppling to link with external electronics. External devices may be controlling via the device’s seven real I2C interface, PWM pins, serial TX/RX pins, GPIO pins, SPI interface.
STMicroelectronics’ Discovery
This Cortex-M3 based device would be an excellent alternative for students and professionals that are new to ARM architecture. STMicroelectronics has a variety of development boards for practically every ARM microcontroller it sells. The one depicting in Figure 4 has the following characteristics:
- STM32F051R8T6 microcontroller in LQFP64 packaging with 64kB Flash and 8kB RAM.
- Onboard ST-LINK/V2 with selection-mode switch, allowing the kit to be used as a stand-alone ST-LINK/V2 (with SWD connector for programming and debugging)
- Power is supplied to the board through USB or via an external 5V supply source.
- Power supply for external applications: 3V and 5V.
- Four LEDs: LD1 (red) for 3.3V power, LD2 (red/green) for USB communication, LD3 (green) for PC9 output, and LD4 (blue) for PC8 output; LD1 (red) for 3.3V power, LD3 (green) for PC9 output, LD2 (red/green) for USB communication, LD4 (blue) for PC8 output.
- Two pushbutton controls (user and reset).
- All LQFP64 I/Os have an extension header for rapid connecting to the prototype board and simple probing.
TI’s MSP430 LaunchPad Microcontroller Development Board
The MSP430 LaunchPad (MSP-EXP430G2) is a simple Flash programmer and debugger for Texas Instruments’ MSP430G2xx family microcontrollers. It provides a lot of debugging and interface facilities on board for any MSP430 microcontroller device development. It comes with on-board emulation for programming and debugging, as well as a 14-/20-pin DIP socket, on-board buttons and LEDs, and BoosterPack-compatible pinouts that allow a variety of plug-in modules for expanded functionality including wifi and screens.
Two MSP430 devices are including in the MSP-EXP430G2 LaunchPad, each with up to 16kB Flash, 512B RAM, a 16MHz CPU, and integrating peripherals like as an 8-channel 10-bit ADC, timers, and serial connectivity (UART, I2C and SPI). It’s a full development platform thanks to free software development tools like Open Source tools, IAR Embedded Workbench and TI’s Eclipse-based Code Composer Studio like the MSPGCC compiler or Energia.
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