| I have an STK-500 that all it was ever used for was to | burn some hex for a few chips ... | I was checking on a little ARM MBED 1768 dev board from | NXP and it also looked promising. ... if I learn on a more | sophistated MCU perhaps that would be beneficial later on. | ... may be overkill | Regards | | Robert
>From a learning standpoint, you could go either way (AVR or ARM). For a clock app, and ARM is really overkill, but that could be said for an AVR too. A clock is just a counter string, which can be (and has been) done with just a few logic chips. But its also a good app, to get feet wet in this whole idea of embedded programming. Its not as if you were designing for production, so have fun. That MBED looks like it uses the same concept as the AVR Arduino: http://mbed.org/ http://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/Hardware AVR devices come in DIP packages, so you can build your one-off hobby project straight onto a perf board, if you want to get away from the arduino. ARM chips are exclusively SMT, and fine pitch parts at that, so that MBED platform is real handy. It gives the hobbyist a lot a horsepower to play with. To the newbies, an ARM is a serious processor. Comparing it to an AVR, is like comparing apples, to not oranges, but truck loads of apples. And don't worry about the overkill issue. Especially, for learning purposes. If someone told me, 30-years ago, to use a uC for a chase- lite circuit, I would have showed the the door, with the pointy end of my shoe. A little over 10-years ago, I did just that (the chase lite uC circuit, not the shoe thing). At under a buck, for a low end uC, it was the logical way to go. It saved both on cost, and labor of the added hand wiring. That being said, there is a strong current in the nixie community, to go retro. Not just in the tubes, but how they're driven. Screw the processors. No ARM. No AVR, nor PIC. No old 6502. No TTL logic, or any other IC. But use discrete components. Preferably using only tubes. A few have done it. There are about 4 of 5 examples that I'm aware of. I even have one pencil whipped. But it doesn't count, until there's some real working hardware. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "neonixie-l" group. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/neonixie-l?hl=en-GB.
