6 ms·

If you had to pick a MCU to try this out on, do you have a preference for a devkit to test this with?

by ghotli 9mo ago

vablings 9mo ago
RP2040 is really great experience. You can get a debug probe (either buy or make yourself with another RP2040) I cant tell you how awesome it is with minimal setup to get - Full print logging - Option to attach a debugger - cargo r will just flash your code and reset the RP2040
- inferiorhuman 9mo ago
  probe-rs is amazing. In ARM land it works with pretty much any CMSIS compliant gear, and yeah you get debugging and logging on pretty much anything as a result.
- progbits 9mo ago
  I wish they had smaller modules with wifi (pico w is too large for many of my usecases). That's the only reason I keep using ESP-C*. It's getting better but the esp-rs tooling has a lot of very rough edges.
  - yonatan8070 9mo ago
    You've got boards like the Seeed Studio Xiao with an RP2040, that board is absolutely tiny!
    - progbits 9mo ago
      The 2040/2350 ones don't have wireless radio.
      - yonatan8070 9mo ago
        Oh.. my brain completely skipped "with wifi" in your comment, my bad.
        progbits 9mo ago
        You had me excited for a second :)
  - the__alchemist 9mo ago
    Same. Non-Espressif manufacturers have been sleeping on Wi-Fi capability. Nordic now has a chip, but I haven't tried it. I have been using an Esp running Esp-Hosted, connected to the main MCU over SPI.
  - unnamedd 9mo ago
    It is a little bit complicated to start and understand how the series ESP-S* works, but as soon you do, everything gets better. It does have Wi-Fi and Bluetooth capabilities and also can be very small. A good example are the Adafruit Qt Py series. I am currently working with the Adafruit Qt Py (ESP-S2) and I am in love to that board. This one, doesn’t have Bluetooth, but the S3 does. Because of the Xtensa, you need to use a special fork of Rust maintained by Espressif, but worth a try.
idan 9mo ago
Also espressif RISC V mcu's like the ESP32-C3 and -C6 are fantastic. Some Nordic MCUs are easy too, specifically nrf52840. Have fun!
- apitman 9mo ago
  Just got my first esp32-c6 and really excited to start playing with it. The p4 looks like a beast and want to try that out eventually as well. Feels good to be back hacking on embedded again.
- ecalifornica 9mo ago
  I'll second this, Embassy on the ESP32-c6 is great.
inferiorhuman 9mo ago
STM is popular because their lineup is cheap, offers a lot of features, and the documentation is readily available. The flip side is that their errata is lengthy, the Rust HAL is complex to support lots of different designs under the same product names, the documentation from STM is poorly organized and spread out over a zillion different documents, and Mac compatibility needs a gigantic asterisk. You can also get a BlackPill (get the F411 version with 8MB flash) off of AliExpress for $0.99 from WeAct's official store. Unlike STM's own dev boards (Nucleo) you'll need a separate debug probe. Nucleos that'll give you a lot of breathing room can be had for $10-15. RP is also cheap and has that pretty sweet programmable GPIO and documentation that everyone seems to love. Adafruit has an RP2040 Feather for $12, RP2350 for $15, or with an ESP32-C6 (RISC-V) for $15. NXP has chips with similarly programmable GPIO but they're not well supported by Rust. The RP's PIO stuff is bonkers and potentially very interesting if you wanted to make random protocol dongles. VGA out? Why not? Nordic stuff looks pretty sweet (and their Bluetooth support seems well loved) but is generally a bit expensive. Dev boards are available from micro:bit and Adafruit, among others. I've been working on a HAL for an older Atmel SoC and absolutely loved the documentation. But Atmel stuff is expensive. Quality of the Chinese clones is iffy. I set myself back a bit by bricking my one board but am hoping to have a beta release in a month or so. More recent Atmel/Microchip stuff (D21, D51, E51) has a HAL that the Embassy folks seem to have overlooked. You can get them on Adafruit boards at varying price points. Or just pick something unsupported and start writing a HAL. It's a great way to get up close and personal with how everything fits together. The one thing I wouldn't do is get some high end thing to start with. Teensy's (NXP i.MXRT) pack a lot of punch but even their native Arduino libs don't really let you exploit the power. STM's H7 series as well, they're way too complex to use as a learning tool even if they are fairly cheap.
- 5d41402abc4b 9mo ago
  > The flip side is that their errata is lengthy Just like security bugs, lengthy errata doesn't mean anything. A popular MCU will have bigger errata sheet because it gets more eyes on it. >documentation from STM is poorly organized and spread out over a zillion different documents The spreading out over multiple documents is good organization. You don't want to combine your datasheet, reference manual and appnotes into one.
baby_souffle 9mo ago
Nordic nrf series of chips are ubiquitous, cheap, really well documented and have very good support for the Bluetooth side of things in embassy. If you don't need any of the wireless radio stuff, I think the raspberry pi microcontroller family is also ridiculously well supported in rust and it's possible to get one of the newer raspberry pi microcontroller is complete with ethernet and several megs of flash for not even 10 bucks.

If you had to pick a MCU to try this out on, do you have a preference for a devkit to test this with?

by ghotli 9mo ago

If you had to pick a MCU to try this out on, do you have a preference for a devkit to test this with?

RP2040 is really great experience. You can get a debug probe (either buy or make yourself with another RP2040) I cant tell you how awesome it is with minimal setup to get - Full print logging - Option to attach a debugger - cargo r will just flash your code and reset the RP2040

inferiorhuman 9mo ago
probe-rs is amazing. In ARM land it works with pretty much any CMSIS compliant gear, and yeah you get debugging and logging on pretty much anything as a result.
progbits 9mo ago
I wish they had smaller modules with wifi (pico w is too large for many of my usecases). That's the only reason I keep using ESP-C*. It's getting better but the esp-rs tooling has a lot of very rough edges.
- yonatan8070 9mo ago
  You've got boards like the Seeed Studio Xiao with an RP2040, that board is absolutely tiny!
  - progbits 9mo ago
    The 2040/2350 ones don't have wireless radio.
    - yonatan8070 9mo ago
      Oh.. my brain completely skipped "with wifi" in your comment, my bad.
      - progbits 9mo ago
        You had me excited for a second :)
- the__alchemist 9mo ago
  Same. Non-Espressif manufacturers have been sleeping on Wi-Fi capability. Nordic now has a chip, but I haven't tried it. I have been using an Esp running Esp-Hosted, connected to the main MCU over SPI.
- unnamedd 9mo ago
  It is a little bit complicated to start and understand how the series ESP-S* works, but as soon you do, everything gets better. It does have Wi-Fi and Bluetooth capabilities and also can be very small. A good example are the Adafruit Qt Py series. I am currently working with the Adafruit Qt Py (ESP-S2) and I am in love to that board. This one, doesn’t have Bluetooth, but the S3 does. Because of the Xtensa, you need to use a special fork of Rust maintained by Espressif, but worth a try.

idan 9mo ago

Also espressif RISC V mcu's like the ESP32-C3 and -C6 are fantastic. Some Nordic MCUs are easy too, specifically nrf52840. Have fun!

apitman 9mo ago
Just got my first esp32-c6 and really excited to start playing with it. The p4 looks like a beast and want to try that out eventually as well. Feels good to be back hacking on embedded again.
ecalifornica 9mo ago
I'll second this, Embassy on the ESP32-c6 is great.

inferiorhuman 9mo ago

STM is popular because their lineup is cheap, offers a lot of features, and the documentation is readily available. The flip side is that their errata is lengthy, the Rust HAL is complex to support lots of different designs under the same product names, the documentation from STM is poorly organized and spread out over a zillion different documents, and Mac compatibility needs a gigantic asterisk. You can also get a BlackPill (get the F411 version with 8MB flash) off of AliExpress for $0.99 from WeAct's official store. Unlike STM's own dev boards (Nucleo) you'll need a separate debug probe. Nucleos that'll give you a lot of breathing room can be had for $10-15. RP is also cheap and has that pretty sweet programmable GPIO and documentation that everyone seems to love. Adafruit has an RP2040 Feather for $12, RP2350 for $15, or with an ESP32-C6 (RISC-V) for $15. NXP has chips with similarly programmable GPIO but they're not well supported by Rust. The RP's PIO stuff is bonkers and potentially very interesting if you wanted to make random protocol dongles. VGA out? Why not? Nordic stuff looks pretty sweet (and their Bluetooth support seems well loved) but is generally a bit expensive. Dev boards are available from micro:bit and Adafruit, among others. I've been working on a HAL for an older Atmel SoC and absolutely loved the documentation. But Atmel stuff is expensive. Quality of the Chinese clones is iffy. I set myself back a bit by bricking my one board but am hoping to have a beta release in a month or so. More recent Atmel/Microchip stuff (D21, D51, E51) has a HAL that the Embassy folks seem to have overlooked. You can get them on Adafruit boards at varying price points. Or just pick something unsupported and start writing a HAL. It's a great way to get up close and personal with how everything fits together. The one thing I wouldn't do is get some high end thing to start with. Teensy's (NXP i.MXRT) pack a lot of punch but even their native Arduino libs don't really let you exploit the power. STM's H7 series as well, they're way too complex to use as a learning tool even if they are fairly cheap.

5d41402abc4b 9mo ago
> The flip side is that their errata is lengthy Just like security bugs, lengthy errata doesn't mean anything. A popular MCU will have bigger errata sheet because it gets more eyes on it. >documentation from STM is poorly organized and spread out over a zillion different documents The spreading out over multiple documents is good organization. You don't want to combine your datasheet, reference manual and appnotes into one.

baby_souffle 9mo ago

Nordic nrf series of chips are ubiquitous, cheap, really well documented and have very good support for the Bluetooth side of things in embassy. If you don't need any of the wireless radio stuff, I think the raspberry pi microcontroller family is also ridiculously well supported in rust and it's possible to get one of the newer raspberry pi microcontroller is complete with ethernet and several megs of flash for not even 10 bucks.