3 ms·

MSP430 was famous for its extremely low power in the 8051 days etc. Now ARM is doing the same with 32-bit on the power consumption side. I'm not positive about

by ausjke 12y ago

MSP430 was famous for its extremely low power in the 8051 days etc. Now ARM is doing the same with 32-bit on the power consumption side. I'm not positive about the 16-bit MSP430's future because people normally 'follows the trend', ecosystem rules when other things are equal.

jwr 12y ago
I switched from MSP430 to the Freescale Kinetis line (ARM Cortex M0+ and M4) for larger projects. But these ARM chips are incredibly complex compared to the MSP430 microcontrollers. So for simpler projects where I really need to get results quickly, I still prefer the MSP430. I'd argue that if you want to learn about microcontrollers, the MSP430 (especially the G2 value line) is a very good place to start. I am not very fond of Arduino, because if you really want to know how a microcontroller works, you will not learn that with Arduino. It hides everything from you, presenting an overly-simplified API.
- minthd 12y ago
  What your opinion about the Stm32Cube libraries, that try to have high level api's while still offering low level api's as needed - while still saving you some effort in learning the device?
  - jwr 12y ago
    I am not familiar with those. But I will offer a general comment: most vendors completely miss the boat as to the code they provide. What I'm looking for is a way to quickly build numerous applications which will be maintained for a long time. To really utilize the microcontroller I will need to get low-level anyway, so there is no point in "high-level abstractions": they always come back and bite you in the end. Give me libraries, but make them low-level libraries, and maintain them well. Give me a way to easily upgrade those libraries in my projects (e.g. code templates, code generated from an IDE are no-nos). Don't give me a "universal abstraction layer for cross-device portability". Give me good bootloaders, clock management libraries, simple APIs for switching energy modes, low-level libraries for comms. So far I found nothing of the kind, which is sad. I think it's one of the reasons the software world is really lagging behind the hardware.
    - minthd 12y ago
      Good answer. Instead of using the templates,can't you just read the docs and use the libraries yourself? this will help with upgrading - although it won't solve the issue of compatibility breaking changes. What's wrong with "universal abstraction layer for cross-device portability" - aren't they using the same peripherals through the family ?

by ausjke 12y ago

jwr 12y ago

I switched from MSP430 to the Freescale Kinetis line (ARM Cortex M0+ and M4) for larger projects. But these ARM chips are incredibly complex compared to the MSP430 microcontrollers. So for simpler projects where I really need to get results quickly, I still prefer the MSP430. I'd argue that if you want to learn about microcontrollers, the MSP430 (especially the G2 value line) is a very good place to start. I am not very fond of Arduino, because if you really want to know how a microcontroller works, you will not learn that with Arduino. It hides everything from you, presenting an overly-simplified API.

minthd 12y ago
What your opinion about the Stm32Cube libraries, that try to have high level api's while still offering low level api's as needed - while still saving you some effort in learning the device?
- jwr 12y ago
  I am not familiar with those. But I will offer a general comment: most vendors completely miss the boat as to the code they provide. What I'm looking for is a way to quickly build numerous applications which will be maintained for a long time. To really utilize the microcontroller I will need to get low-level anyway, so there is no point in "high-level abstractions": they always come back and bite you in the end. Give me libraries, but make them low-level libraries, and maintain them well. Give me a way to easily upgrade those libraries in my projects (e.g. code templates, code generated from an IDE are no-nos). Don't give me a "universal abstraction layer for cross-device portability". Give me good bootloaders, clock management libraries, simple APIs for switching energy modes, low-level libraries for comms. So far I found nothing of the kind, which is sad. I think it's one of the reasons the software world is really lagging behind the hardware.
  - minthd 12y ago
    Good answer. Instead of using the templates,can't you just read the docs and use the libraries yourself? this will help with upgrading - although it won't solve the issue of compatibility breaking changes. What's wrong with "universal abstraction layer for cross-device portability" - aren't they using the same peripherals through the family ?