How connect this board to the robot ?

i think the price is too high ,slash it by half at least

Ditto ^

£33.24? way too much..

far too much expensive!

all the other companies are slashing their prices to the bone and then they sell ok

too expensive

The price is right if you put any value on your time. One problem I see: The Application Board consumes all of the mbed pins. So if you want to something off-board with sensors or actuators, for example, there aren't any pins open for you. Although you could get a few pins used for an XBee module if you don't need a wireless link. Also, you don't have access to many of the XBee I/O pins, which can do some cool things. I would rather have a break-out board that lets me attach just the devices I need on small daughter cards. Maybe that's coming?

@Jon: the headers for seating mbed are double-row, so you still can access any pin directly.

The problem is however that they are all also connected to other peripherals. For example if you use the pins connected to the accelerometer it should go fine if you use I2C, but if you just use them as GPIO it might happen you randomly enter the device address of the accelerometer, and then it will start pulling the data low.

Sorry you guys but you are missing the bigger picture here. Why produce a board for prototyping when you cannot connect any peripherals to develop with? Yes this is very expensive by today's standard even though I do not support price erosion within our electronics industry. If it was not for dedicated hardworking professionals we would not have these at all, so they should be rewarded by earning a living from them.

The problem here is the poor forethought that led to a design that is out of date and not very much use at all. Who actually uses (or wants to use) a poor quality (visually) display like this. Take a look at your mobile phone, would you have a display like this? no you wouldn't. If it's not OLED with touch screen (or poor a man's LCD) then it would probably go in the bin. Raspberry Pudding or Pie (whatever they call it) has 1080 graphics! Where's Mbed's 1080 graphics? Earlier monochrome LCD's are very important for the simpler lower powered projects, however most of mine have been binned.

Embedded Artists produce a very good ' kid's' board:

http://www.embeddedartists.com/products/lpcxpresso/xpr_base.php

This is brilliant for educational purposes but there are too many toys on it after you get bored.

What we need is a relatively compact board that has the USB, ETHERNET, XBEE and power supply connectors plus a balanced amount of sockets with jumper connections to be able to connect almost any combination of peripheral device even Arduino style shields without soldering leads along with some areas where devices can be soldered, I find this a good board if you are Okay to solder:

http://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/processor-microcontroller-development-kits/7141357/

I have two of the Mbeduino boards. They are good for a compact design and have Arduino shield connections that I have many different display shields I can plug and play as I like.

However there is a revelation the Mbed loaded FRDM-KL25Z board £8.40 + VAT from Farnnel and I can use my Arduino display shields.

The problem is going to be why pay approximately £50 just for a CPU with no connections when you can get the KL25Z. Personally I would always take the Mbed LPC1768 so I suppose I will have to produce my own design of prototype multilayer board and get them made in China.

Hi All,

As there was a little debate about this, I thought it was worth giving my perspective.

Q: Why is it so expensive?

A: Because there is a lot of stuff on it. Have a look at the parts in a distributor catalogue (at 1,000+), the cost of PCB and assembly, how much shipping costs, and you'll arrive at the same number. Its an enabler, not a money-spinner.

Q : Why is it designed that way?

A: I'd claim its a good implementation for the problem it was trying to solve. One criticism is that it isn't very flexible. Thank you for noticing! That's exactly what I was hoping for!

With flexibility comes options, and the ability to get things wrong. As with the mbed NXP LPC1768 itself, every Apps Board owner has the same piece of hardware in front of them, so users can share code and be confident that results can be replicated.

You can expand it a little with jumper wires, but that's really not what this board is about. If your prototype needs lots of flexibility, then solder-less breadboard is far better suited!

Q: Who is it for?

A: Whoever can benefit from having a fixed, reliable, well supported set of features on a convenient board to make experimentation easy!

Its particularly good for workshop and class environments, maybe where the flexibility and final design isn't the focus. The board has been designed to fit as closely as possible with the mbed Textbook by Rob Toulson and Tim Wilmshurst, and it also fits in with the associated Course Notes.

So if you're trying to C++, or how to communicate over I2C, its quite convenient to have a reference platform you can be confident in, rather than question your wiring when it doesn't work.

While the screen isn't a super high definition, colour TFT, its perfectly usable - Its a trade off we've had to make, and I think we've got it about right for the target audience.

I think the summary is that it all comes down to perspective. If you want complete feasibility, or are looking for a really cheap platform, it may not be for you. If you see the value in a a well supported, fixed function platform, its might look like a bargain, depending on what you want it for.

Either way, I'm proud of it, and hope that everyone who has bought one (they seems to be selling well!) has as much fun with it as I have had making it exist!

Cheers, Chris

As a follow up from the previous post (which I had to trim to keep under 3,000 characters!)...

Have a quick look at the Baseboards section of the cookbook.

The Coolcomponents workshop board is less than half the price of the apps board, but has a lot less functionality.

The Embedded Artists baseboard has more functionality, but is bigger and more expensive.

And of course there are lots of other great boards out there too; it is worth clicking through the list to see whats on offer. Reviewing the mbed Application Board, comparing and contrasting against what already exists might add some context.

Cheers, Chris

Thank you Chris for defending the design of this board and I would agree with all that you say. Yes it is excellent for educational use, there needs to be a 'reliable' board that works and is supported for this purpose and I would certainly have bought one if it were available in 2010. The Mbed compiler is the easiest compiler to use and a fabulous way to introduce novices to embedded processor programming without being frightening.

However for many existing members of Mbed we need something a little more advanced and flexible. Bread board and jumper wires are fine but what a mess!

Look at this:

http://www.mikroe.com/easypic/

Something along these lines, unpopulated, just power supply input socket options, USB, Ethernet connections and a whole load of I/O sockets that can 'jumper' connected and of course the Mbed socket.

There are so many devices that we can now connect to the Mbed and as members progress with their programming, a next stage 'flexible' board would be very welcome here.

We all know that it is possible to design your own multilayer board and have it fabricated at reasonable cost in China, however it would be an advantage to have an Mbed designed and 'endorsed' board for this purpose for shall we say 'the next step' when we have mastered the 4 lines of code.... 'Hello World'.

But let's be honest here, what is Mbed, what is for and who is for. Is it an educational introduction to embedded processor technology, is it for enthusiasts that are interested in micro-controllers like myself or is it for potential university graduates to learn and favour the NXP processors that will in future lead to further sales of their technology.

Perhaps it's all of these, but from my point of view, as I have purchased four LPC1768 Mbeds and three KL25Z's I think I am supporting the Mbed concept and I also believe that Mbed has a certain responsibility to 'survey' what Mbed users would like to have as an 'endorsed' addition to Mbed rather than just announcing it.

All you have to do is ask Mbed users what they would like to have as a good all-rounder board and I'm sure you will get a very comprehensive idea and perhaps we could all add our bit to further Mbed development.

It's interesting that some people find the Application Board too expensive. There are two reasons for this: 1. Raspberry Pi. Raspberry Pi is made by a charitable foundation (little profit margin) and the distributers concerned barely cover costs. Result, a product that sells for way below the normal economic price. Also it was heavily cut down, no frills and was supplied with no documentation, no software, etc, etc. 2. Development boards such as the Kinetis Freedom board are virtually given away now by the chip manufacturers because they want to sell silicon not boards. So many new devices contain the same ARM cores the competition is fierce to persuade design engineers to specify a particular microcontroller. In other words, these boards are sold with zero margin too (or even at a loss). Pity the small outfits developing the accessory boards: they have to make a profit to survive. The distributers will add their margin too. Seen this way, the many "over-priced" add-on cards actually represent good value for money. Of course ARM are in a nice position here, but IMHO as a design engineer myself I feel the Application Board is worth every penny.