5 ms·

Something to be careful about - MediaTek has a reputation of being very hard to work with. As long as you're not trying to do anything beyond what Seeed Studio

by sounds 12y ago

Something to be careful about - MediaTek has a reputation of being very hard to work with. As long as you're not trying to do anything beyond what Seeed Studio has already provided for, not a problem. But if you run into something where you need MediaTek's help, you're out of luck. Just hope I can save you that little discovery.

userbinator 12y ago
I know that a lot of documentation and support can be obtained from various Chinese sites, at least for MTK's phone SoCs. It's absolutely true that trying to approach them "through the front door" will not yield anything worthwhile, but the culture has found other means. If this one becomes popular, I expect the same to happen. On the bright side, at least it's not Broadcom.
- ausjke 12y ago
  I start laughing when I saw the last sentence, in all my designs I tried to avoid Broadcom as much as possible. Same as Marvell, you don't get anything other than a two-page brief before you sign a NDA, and if you're not a volume player, you normally don't get a chance to even sign the NDA. Marvell is getting slightly better with docs, but still light-year behind TI and Freescale, whose design docs are pretty much all publicly accessible.
  - swamp40 12y ago
    Broadcom seems to be easing up a bit with their introduction of their WICED (pronounced Wicked) line of Bluetooth Smart and Wifi wireless modules. - $20 dev board keyfob that connects to an iPhone our of the box. - lots of firmware source code examples - available iOS source code - free compiler toolchain and USB programming - open schematics and pcb files - open forum: http://community.broadcom.com/ http://community.broadcom.com/ As a designer, I know it's easy to have a bad experience with a particular manufacturer and then avoid them like the plague in the future. One time we designed in an Atmel TinyAVR into something, and as soon as we finished it went completely out-of-stock for 12 months. We had to throw the boards and firmware away and start from scratch again using a PIC. (We've never used another Atmel processor after that.) But I try to remember that it's just a bias in my mind, and personal biases don't always jibe with reality. Rationally, I understand that Atmel's not a bad company just because they had one supply chain glitch 7 years ago. So my advice is: try to keep an open mind.
    - sounds 12y ago
      I absolutely agree. I'm kind of selfishly pleased that my comment triggered you to share your war stories. But I do hope that by publicly sharing what manufacturers are like to work with it prods them to be more open to the community in the future. Or if not, that at least I can steer designers toward those companies that are easy to work with, and let market forces do the rest.
  - Wells_Tu 12y ago
    Agree with you ,the docs provided by TI and Freescale are pretty in details in their community

by sounds 12y ago

userbinator 12y ago

I know that a lot of documentation and support can be obtained from various Chinese sites, at least for MTK's phone SoCs. It's absolutely true that trying to approach them "through the front door" will not yield anything worthwhile, but the culture has found other means. If this one becomes popular, I expect the same to happen. On the bright side, at least it's not Broadcom.

ausjke 12y ago
I start laughing when I saw the last sentence, in all my designs I tried to avoid Broadcom as much as possible. Same as Marvell, you don't get anything other than a two-page brief before you sign a NDA, and if you're not a volume player, you normally don't get a chance to even sign the NDA. Marvell is getting slightly better with docs, but still light-year behind TI and Freescale, whose design docs are pretty much all publicly accessible.
- swamp40 12y ago
  Broadcom seems to be easing up a bit with their introduction of their WICED (pronounced Wicked) line of Bluetooth Smart and Wifi wireless modules. - $20 dev board keyfob that connects to an iPhone our of the box. - lots of firmware source code examples - available iOS source code - free compiler toolchain and USB programming - open schematics and pcb files - open forum: http://community.broadcom.com/ http://community.broadcom.com/ As a designer, I know it's easy to have a bad experience with a particular manufacturer and then avoid them like the plague in the future. One time we designed in an Atmel TinyAVR into something, and as soon as we finished it went completely out-of-stock for 12 months. We had to throw the boards and firmware away and start from scratch again using a PIC. (We've never used another Atmel processor after that.) But I try to remember that it's just a bias in my mind, and personal biases don't always jibe with reality. Rationally, I understand that Atmel's not a bad company just because they had one supply chain glitch 7 years ago. So my advice is: try to keep an open mind.
  - sounds 12y ago
    I absolutely agree. I'm kind of selfishly pleased that my comment triggered you to share your war stories. But I do hope that by publicly sharing what manufacturers are like to work with it prods them to be more open to the community in the future. Or if not, that at least I can steer designers toward those companies that are easy to work with, and let market forces do the rest.
- Wells_Tu 12y ago
  Agree with you ,the docs provided by TI and Freescale are pretty in details in their community