Dave T

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12 years, 10 months ago.

Replicate mbed design?

I want to implement the entirety of the mbed design into my own circuit board. There is not enough info in the mbed schematic to duplicate the design.

I want to design an in house panel board using the mbed design and some additional circuits, for pass/fail testing various communication interfaces on our company's products. Anything beyond soldering the mbed module into my board negates the rapid development and deployment of a test application. It leaves me to dealing with the raw LPC1768 chip, datasheets, and software on my own.

Some "kits" give a fully documented reference design for development use. Is this not an option for the mbed? The panel board in question would not marketed or sold out of house, only would be used in house.

Thanks so much;

Tim

2 Answers

Simon Ford
12 years, 10 months ago.

Hi Tim,

The mbed schematics show you everything you need to build the core LPC1768 (or other target) circuitry, but we do not currently provide the interface chip design for use by others (this is what provides the reliable flash programming and serial interface over USB; what makes an mbed board "mbed"!).

However, Chris and Samuel have been looking at how we could make this interface chip available for use on 3rd party boards, so you can effectively add that interface section to your design too and mbed-enable your own boards. Initially the idea is based on the requests we've had for people wanting to make high-volume 3rd party development boards that can take advantage of all the mbed tools, but could potentially be useful in products that need an interface or reprogrammable functionality.

Perhaps this would solve your requirement? Comments/i++ welcome :)

Simon

Accepted Answer
Dave T
poster
12 years, 10 months ago.

Thanks for the speedy response to my question. Yes, adding the availability of the interface chip would help me a lot. I know the LPC1768 has a boot loader and Jtag port, but then this requires a special Jtag programmer and or emulation system.

I love the simplicity of just flashing a few boards of my own design through the USB using your compiler As a Test Engineer, I get all these designs with many communication interfaces that need functional test, but don't want to burden design engineers with test hardware/software.

I don't need or want to get into all the embedded code details they have to deal with..

Now I could also just add dip pins into my board, and solder/plug in mbed, but it LOOKS kludgey.

Thanks again for your consideration; Tim Davenport Campbell Scientific