The mbed Microcontrollers are a series of microcontrollers development boards designed for fast, flexible and low-risk and professional rapid prototyping.

They are packaged as a small 40-pin 0.1" DIP form-factor convenient for prototyping with solderless breadboard, stripboard, and through-hole PCBs. They include a built-in USB programming interface that is as simple as using a USB Flash Drive. Plug it in, drop on an ARM program binary, and its up and running!

mbed NXP LPC11U24 (left) and mbed NXP LPC1768 (right)

The USB drag ‘n’ drop programming interface works with Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, meaning you can re-flash the microcontroller without needing drivers or a programming application. The program binary can be easily generated using the mbed Online Compiler, or alternatively using any other standard toolchain like Keil uVision, Code Red, or GCC.

There is also support for a virtual serial port using the same USB interface, enabling communication with a PC terminal, Labview, Matlab, and any other programming language that can communicate with a COM port.

mbed Microcontroller Variants¶

The same rapid prototyping form-factor and functionality is available for a number of different microcontroller targets, suitable for prototyping different applications:

	mbed NXP LPC11U24	mbed NXP LPC1768
	Order	Order
Intended applications	USB Devices Battery powered 8/16-bit applications	Ethernet USB Host Powerful applications
Best for low power
Best for low cost chip
Best for performance
Best connectivity
Specifications of core
Core	ARM Cortex-M0	ARM Cortex-M3
Frequency	48MHz	96MHz
FLASH	32KB	512KB
RAM	8KB	32KB
Power	1-16mA (Vb)	60-120mA (Vin)
Peripherals
Ethernet
USBHost
USBDevice
SPI	(2)	(2)
I2C	(1)	(2)
CAN		(2)
AnalogIn	(6)	(6)
PwmOut	(8)	(6)
AnalogOut		(1)

See also¶