kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Craig Southeren <craigs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 13/10/2012, at 4:52 AM, Dick Hollenbeck <dick@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> On 10/12/2012 12:52 AM, Hans Henry von Tresckow wrote:
>> On Thu, Oct 11, 2012 at 3:39 PM, Vesa Solonen <vesa.solonen@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>> 11.10.2012 18:09, Dick Hollenbeck kirjoitti:
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> More immediately, I need a template for this StellarisLM4F120 Launchpad
>>>> board:
>>> 
>>> I've been eyeing on it for some serious smps and induction heating control.
>>> The only thing that is less than clear is there a fully open toolchain
>>> available. I'm not going to invest much for a proprietary programming tools.
>>> 
>>> The price and features are impressive. Might jump off the AVR ship...
>>> 
>>> -Vesa
>> I'll let you know how the Codesourcery toolchain works out when mine
>> finally get here....(Ti says Nov 16... Pre order my foot.)
> 
> I can testify that it works just fine.  It is gnu gcc/g++ from Mentor, and is free.
> I've been using it for 6 months.  Firmware development has never been easier with these
> Cortex-M3 and M4 chips, along with free tools like Codesourcery Lite from Mentor.  Where
> else can you get 256 kbytes of 32 bit program code space, 10 or 15 peripherals, for $4 - $5 ?
> And they run at 50 MHz to 200 Mhz.
> 
> And there are about 6 vendors who are all beating themselves silly on price.  This is the
> sweet spot for embedded work.
> 
> Dick

I've been using the STM32 series micros for the last few months with the CodeSourcery compiler.

Same deal - 32 bit ARM M4, up to 1M of flash and 192k of RAM with USB, CAN etc. Clock speeds in the same range

I can also recommend the Chibios RTOS, if you need one. 

   Craig