3 ms·

Why is your "open source Teensy" [0] just an RP2350 on a Teensy shaped board? In my book, what makes a Teensy a Teensy is 1) hardware support, like 600Mhz cloc

by alnwlsn 9mo ago

Why is your "open source Teensy" [0] just an RP2350 on a Teensy shaped board? In my book, what makes a Teensy a Teensy is 1) hardware support, like 600Mhz clock, CAN, FPU, RTC, other hardware peripherals which the RP2350 lacks and 2) software compatibility with Paul Stoffregen's well documented Teensyduino libraries. I would not buy something else if I needed these features. Do you plan to do a port? Why not build around the same IMXRT1062? Are you barred from buying Paul's bootloader chips [1]? [0] https://forum.pjrc.com/index.php?threads/open-source-teensy-compatible-what-features-do-you-want.77584/ https://forum.pjrc.com/index.php?threads/open-source-teensy-... [1] https://www.pjrc.com/store/ic_mkl02_t4.html https://www.pjrc.com/store/ic_mkl02_t4.html

rafram 9mo ago
It looks like it's just a set of bullet points on a forum thread, not anything like a final design, so go post that comment there.
ptorrone 9mo ago
hi, great question. we have to start with something and while the RP2350 is not going to beat a 600mhz m7 it is much less expensive, fast to get, has lots of nifty support libraries available, and will definitely do better than the teensy 3.2 which many folks loved so much (and was discontinued during the chip shortage). this is also a great time to add things that we always wanted in the teensy: SWD debug, built in 8 MB storage, lipoly battery charging, open source bootloader, open hardware design. stuff like CAN is supported via PIO (https://github.com/KevinOConnor/can2040 https://github.com/KevinOConnor/can2040), as is USB host on any two adjacent pins. M33 has FPU, and the dormant/RTC mode for the RP2350 is 10uA (see https://www.tomshardware.com/raspberry-pi/raspberry-pi-pico/whats-inside-the-raspberry-pi-pico-2s-rp2350 https://www.tomshardware.com/raspberry-pi/raspberry-pi-pico/...). other 'teensiriffic' things like NeoPixel DMA support is well supported by PIO on the RP2350. as well as I2S audio. as for the bootloader chip: we don't want to trade one closed-single-source component for another. if we're going to make something it should be fully open source as much as we can! finally, for teensyduino libraries that you love: there's no reason they cant be ported (we did an audio port for the samd51) - which specific library are you referring to?
- inferiorhuman 9mo ago
  Right, but you're not really competing on processor speed. You're competing on maturity of peripherals where the RP doesn't really match up PIO or not. Edit: I see you're comparing it to the 3.2 but I suspect most folks are going to be comparing your offering to the 4.x.
  - cjbgkagh 9mo ago
    There is a place for a cheaper 5v tolerant microcontroller, but that’s more of a commodity space and probably not worth competing in for most.
  - ptorrone 9mo ago
    it will have benefits over the 4.x - we can always spin up a version with the iMX chipset (we have a metro board with the little sister chip, iMX RT1011 already in stock) - tbh if we did something with the iMX RT106x we'd probably start with a Metro (Arduino-shield compatible) or Feather board since that's a super-popular pinout. either way, more hardware is better and we don't want to just give people the same-old-same-old... as we mentioned there's lots of things that we can add to make the board useful to people: SWD, USB C, Lipoly batt, onboard storage, neopixel LED, etc). what peripheral/library are you specifically concerned about?
    - jacquesm 9mo ago
      If you replace the Teensy 4.x it would have to be something very close to the same pinout, foot print, cost and features otherwise it would just be a new product. Ideally you would find a way to source the Teensy directly bypassing Sparkfun.
      - ptorrone 9mo ago
        sparkfun is the single source supplier (and now maker of the product).
        9mo ago
ajross 9mo ago
> hardware support, like 600Mhz clock, CAN, FPU, RTC, other hardware peripherals which the RP2350 lacks FWIW, those are all NXP-provided features on the chip, not something Sparkfun has any particular connection with. There are other iMX devices on the market, just not in this form factor. And there are other vendors with SoCs offering similar performance. Really one of the biggest problems in this market is that everyone is putting the abstractions in the wrong place. We've all collectively decided that this stuff is scary and we need comforting IDEs and hardware uniformity to deal with it. But... portable software and frameworks are hardly new ideas. Come over to Zephyr and see all the stuff you can run on boards from basically everyone, including NXP. There's a lot more great hardware for your project than just Teensy, so stop locking yourself in.

by alnwlsn 9mo ago

rafram 9mo ago

It looks like it's just a set of bullet points on a forum thread, not anything like a final design, so go post that comment there.

ptorrone 9mo ago

hi, great question. we have to start with something and while the RP2350 is not going to beat a 600mhz m7 it is much less expensive, fast to get, has lots of nifty support libraries available, and will definitely do better than the teensy 3.2 which many folks loved so much (and was discontinued during the chip shortage). this is also a great time to add things that we always wanted in the teensy: SWD debug, built in 8 MB storage, lipoly battery charging, open source bootloader, open hardware design. stuff like CAN is supported via PIO (https://github.com/KevinOConnor/can2040 https://github.com/KevinOConnor/can2040), as is USB host on any two adjacent pins. M33 has FPU, and the dormant/RTC mode for the RP2350 is 10uA (see https://www.tomshardware.com/raspberry-pi/raspberry-pi-pico/whats-inside-the-raspberry-pi-pico-2s-rp2350 https://www.tomshardware.com/raspberry-pi/raspberry-pi-pico/...). other 'teensiriffic' things like NeoPixel DMA support is well supported by PIO on the RP2350. as well as I2S audio. as for the bootloader chip: we don't want to trade one closed-single-source component for another. if we're going to make something it should be fully open source as much as we can! finally, for teensyduino libraries that you love: there's no reason they cant be ported (we did an audio port for the samd51) - which specific library are you referring to?

inferiorhuman 9mo ago
Right, but you're not really competing on processor speed. You're competing on maturity of peripherals where the RP doesn't really match up PIO or not. Edit: I see you're comparing it to the 3.2 but I suspect most folks are going to be comparing your offering to the 4.x.
- cjbgkagh 9mo ago
  There is a place for a cheaper 5v tolerant microcontroller, but that’s more of a commodity space and probably not worth competing in for most.
- ptorrone 9mo ago
  it will have benefits over the 4.x - we can always spin up a version with the iMX chipset (we have a metro board with the little sister chip, iMX RT1011 already in stock) - tbh if we did something with the iMX RT106x we'd probably start with a Metro (Arduino-shield compatible) or Feather board since that's a super-popular pinout. either way, more hardware is better and we don't want to just give people the same-old-same-old... as we mentioned there's lots of things that we can add to make the board useful to people: SWD, USB C, Lipoly batt, onboard storage, neopixel LED, etc). what peripheral/library are you specifically concerned about?
  - jacquesm 9mo ago
    If you replace the Teensy 4.x it would have to be something very close to the same pinout, foot print, cost and features otherwise it would just be a new product. Ideally you would find a way to source the Teensy directly bypassing Sparkfun.
    - ptorrone 9mo ago
      sparkfun is the single source supplier (and now maker of the product).
      - 9mo ago

ajross 9mo ago

> hardware support, like 600Mhz clock, CAN, FPU, RTC, other hardware peripherals which the RP2350 lacks FWIW, those are all NXP-provided features on the chip, not something Sparkfun has any particular connection with. There are other iMX devices on the market, just not in this form factor. And there are other vendors with SoCs offering similar performance. Really one of the biggest problems in this market is that everyone is putting the abstractions in the wrong place. We've all collectively decided that this stuff is scary and we need comforting IDEs and hardware uniformity to deal with it. But... portable software and frameworks are hardly new ideas. Come over to Zephyr and see all the stuff you can run on boards from basically everyone, including NXP. There's a lot more great hardware for your project than just Teensy, so stop locking yourself in.