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9 years, 7 months ago.
NUCLEO or FREEDOM?
Hi, I want to get started with the mbed platform and I've been looking for hardware, but I'm still not sure about what is my best option. I don't have any specific project in mind, I just want to learn how mbed works and want to have the most polivalent board.
After some quick research, I found interesting a couple of boards: NUCLEO, since they are pretty cheap (12$), and FREEDOM that has touch sensor, accelerometer and RGB led.
Some of my preferences are:
- High performance and space.
- Extra capabilities (such as embedded modules like accelerometes,...)
- Big amount of GPIO, PWM, analog inputs, I2C, timers, ...
- Less than 25-30$
I don't really care about power consumption, because I think TI MSP430 are my best option when I want low power.
If you consider I missed any other board, please let me know.
Thanks!
1 Answer
9 years, 7 months ago.
Regarding power consumption, the MSP430s are great for low power, but at least the Freescale and NXP M0s, and also some of the more powerful ones (such as the K20D50M, which is an M4) have a deepsleep current of <3uA, and from there you program can continue after wakeup (you have a lower power state, but then a full reset is the only thing which wakes it up).
Besides that both options are valid. If you really want processing power, then you ideally use a core M4(F), possibly M3. Although obviously all is relative, a KL46Z has alot more options than an MSP430 despite that it is just an M0. But on the Nucleo side you would end up at the F401, or the more recently introduced F411. At the Freescale side the K64F or the K22F. They both have a lot of PWM, analog inputs, etc. Freescale gives you some things like accelerometers and RGB led (these lack a touch sensor).
If it is more about general IO capabilities, touch sensor, memory, etc, and less about raw processing power, then the KLxxZ series has everything you need. But there are also Nucleo ones which meet your requirements. And currently in the NXP line up it is a bit more specialized: The LPC4088 is outside your budget, but with 32MB RAM it is way ahead of any others in that regard.