tbinitbini
Electrical
I am thinking of using an Atmel ArmThumb can any one comment on whether this is a good product or not?
I am making a handheld application that will use a 128x64 LCD display and a GPS receiver. A microcontroller like the PIC is not powerful enough to crunch the numbers I need to crunch. I have used the Rabbit Microcontroller in the past but I don’t like the fact that if I want 512K of RAM I have to buy 4MB of RAM and the Rabbit uses the lowest 512K block.
So is the ArmThumb a good product to use. I plan on using the AT91FR4042. It has 2MB of FLASH ROM and 256K of RAM internally and if I need more (I only need 512K of FLASH but I might need 512K of RAM) I can use external flash and ROM which is important to me.
The internal Flash and RAM is nice for hand held operations because they can consume less power than external Flash and RAM/
The only thing that makes me a little nervous is that the AT91FR4042 comes in a BGA and BGA’s can increase the layers you need and developing with one can be a little annoying since you can’t solder a BGA by hand. Using daughter boards for development will be adequate though. Also only two serial ports does not excite me either. The Rabbit had 6 serial ports.
Any comments on the Atmel ArmThumb or on any other microcontroller that would work better?
I am making a handheld application that will use a 128x64 LCD display and a GPS receiver. A microcontroller like the PIC is not powerful enough to crunch the numbers I need to crunch. I have used the Rabbit Microcontroller in the past but I don’t like the fact that if I want 512K of RAM I have to buy 4MB of RAM and the Rabbit uses the lowest 512K block.
So is the ArmThumb a good product to use. I plan on using the AT91FR4042. It has 2MB of FLASH ROM and 256K of RAM internally and if I need more (I only need 512K of FLASH but I might need 512K of RAM) I can use external flash and ROM which is important to me.
The internal Flash and RAM is nice for hand held operations because they can consume less power than external Flash and RAM/
The only thing that makes me a little nervous is that the AT91FR4042 comes in a BGA and BGA’s can increase the layers you need and developing with one can be a little annoying since you can’t solder a BGA by hand. Using daughter boards for development will be adequate though. Also only two serial ports does not excite me either. The Rabbit had 6 serial ports.
Any comments on the Atmel ArmThumb or on any other microcontroller that would work better?