> Especially with ARM where you need to redo a lot of things for every new piece of hardware. So true. There's a reason some people are simply writing 'availab

> Especially with ARM where you need to redo a lot of things for every new piece of hardware. So true. There's a reason some people are simply writing 'available' drivers from scratch. > any software development after the initial release (and maybe some bug fixes) is more of a burden than value add. Quite right. For example: ST's STM32F4 is a nice chip. The drivers in both the 'standard peripheral' and the 'HAL'[1] versions are a mess. The 'HAL' version looks like a junior developer who would rather move into management had the 'std. peripheral' version dropped onto his desk and proceeded to split it into parts without knowing or caring about what abstraction means. Compared to that, Atmel's code is a dream. (Irrespective of whether you approve off the number of (thin) layers used to implement their HALs, you have to admire the amount of thought that went into the design. Unfortunately Atmel was slow in getting onto the ARM wagon.) >Resource constraints come in a lot, many companies try to support way too many products, and end up with a level of "barely" making it work, which is good enough for many traditional customers. Getting back to redoing a lot of things: TI has some strong low power wireless connectivity products. Looking at pages like http://www.ti.com/ww/en/internet_of_things/iot-cloudsolution.html http://www.ti.com/ww/en/internet_of_things/iot-cloudsolution... and http://www.ti.com/lsds/ti/tools-software/wireless_sw.page http://www.ti.com/lsds/ti/tools-software/wireless_sw.page they want you to choose between a pretty big list of external options (ignoring TI-RTOS, http://www.embedded.com/electronics-blogs/break-points/4403045/An-RTOS-from-TI--Why- http://www.embedded.com/electronics-blogs/break-points/44030... ) and aren't even including Contiki, as per http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/Contiki-6LOWPAN http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/Contiki-6LOWPAN. Evaluating a few RTOSs, some proprietary and requiring NDAs, in detail, for specific hardware etc. - not a job for a junior engineer and not done over a weekend. [1] Calling the ST 'HAL' drivers a HAL is a stretch, and let's not even get into what a monumental - the whole thing is.