[time-nuts] Updated Shera controller

Javier Herrero jherrero at hvsistemas.es
Thu Jul 29 11:17:41 UTC 2010


Hello,

El 29/07/2010 07:48, Hal Murray escribió:

> I'm not familiar with windows.  I think PIC and AVR come with free software
> for windows which works well with their low cost development platforms.  The
> compiler may be crippled to get you to buy the real version from somebody,
> but I'm pretty sure it's good enough to get well off the ground.
>
> I'm not familiar with what's available from the vendors for ARM.
>
>
> gcc has good support for PIC, AVR, and ARM.  There may be better, but it's
> well past good enough.  (It runs on windows if you use cygwin.)
>
Atmel provides free of charge a nice windows tool for the AVR, 
http://www.atmel.com/dyn/products/tools_card.asp?tool_id=2725

This integrates the GCC compiler and a quite nice development 
environment (it has been a while since last time I used it), and it is 
not a crippled commercial tool version. There is also no need to run 
cygwin to use this tool.

For the PIC I'm not aware of anything similar. I used time ago the IAR 
tools, but they are both really expensive and really not so good. 
Anyway, I don't like PICs

For ARM there is also windows-based GCC tools set, that can be 
integrated in Eclipse environment. You can get it at 
http://www.yagarto.de . I find ARM7 derivatives (AT91SAM7X or AT91SAM7S 
from Atmel, but there are a lot from several manufacturers) very nice, 
fast and unexpensive 32-bit microcontrollers, adequate for those 
applications where an AVR could be limited, but where there is no need 
to use a big embedded OS. They are also plenty of integrated peripherals.



> Or perhaps you need an OS.  If you depend on a commercial OS, somebody would
> have to buy a license.  Linux is free and runs on ARM.  NetBSD runs on ARM.
> I'm not sure about the other BSD variants.  That's 1/2 :)  I expect most of
> the code we would be interested in would be low level, just collect the data
> and pass it off to a PC to do the number crunching, display, and archiving.
> As such it doesn't need an OS.
>
>
>
An embedded linux project can be very fun, but it is quite complex. If 
you need the OS, you first need the bootloader (U-boot or similar), and 
you must make it work with your hardware. Then the kernel, with the 
drivers for your hardware (there are a lot of them in the linux 
distributions, but some may require some tuning for your hardware, and 
also you can be in the need to write your own drivers for those 
peripherals that are currently not supported). And finaly, the user 
space application(s). Lots of fun, I can guarantee it :)

Best regards,

Javier

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Javier Herrero                            EMAIL: jherrero at hvsistemas.com
HV Sistemas S.L.                          PHONE:         +34 949 336 806
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