Recommendation: Low power microcontroller for battery powered logger
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From: geomet on 29 Mar 2010 21:27 Hi All, I'm after a recommendation for a microcontroller with the following features: Needed: - 3.3V - in circuit programming - I2C I/O - low power sleep mode Wanted: - cheap / free compiler - on board RAM / EEPROM / Flash memory for logging (64K min) What I'm trying to do: Log measurements from a sensor IC that communicates via I2C. Cheers Ross
From: -jg on 29 Mar 2010 22:44 On Mar 30, 1:27 pm, geomet <ross.g.march...(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Hi All, > > I'm after a recommendation for a microcontroller with the following > features: > > Needed: > - 3.3V > - in circuit programming > - I2C I/O > - low power sleep mode > > Wanted: > - cheap / free compiler > - on board RAM / EEPROM / Flash memory for logging (64K min) > > What I'm trying to do: > Log measurements from a sensor IC that communicates via I2C. > > Cheers > Ross You might find it cheaper/easier to use off-chip SO8 storage, as 64K bumps you into the larger packages, and uC are not really self-write energy optimized. Does it need 32KHz time-stamp, or is an on-chip Osc ok ? Once you have external memory, any of the usual suspects would do : TI MSP430, Silabs C8051F, FreeScale RS08B, Atmel Picopower, microchip.... etc -jg
From: Chris Burrows on 29 Mar 2010 22:57 "geomet" <ross.g.marchant(a)gmail.com> wrote in message news:d5fc55c3-9ce7-4a38-afa2-7300a9952ccc(a)l18g2000prm.googlegroups.com... > > I'm after a recommendation for a microcontroller with the following > features: > > Needed: > - 3.3V > - in circuit programming > - I2C I/O > - low power sleep mode > > Wanted: > - cheap / free compiler > - on board RAM / EEPROM / Flash memory for logging (64K min) > > What I'm trying to do: > Log measurements from a sensor IC that communicates via I2C. > We have been doing just that recently using our Armaide development system with both the LPC2106 and LPC2148 QuickStart boards from Embedded Artists and the LPC2103 ARMmite board from CoridiumCorp. Links to all of these are on our website (details below) You can either use the Armaide In-Application (IAP) programming library to use the IAP features of the LPC family to write to unused flash ROM (The LPC2148 has a total of 512Kb of flash ROM) on the MCU or you can use I2C to write to I2C EEPROMs. We are working on the I2C libraries of Armaide right now and have so far successfully: a) written to / read from the on-board (but limited in size) I2C EEPROM on the EA boards b) written to / read from a Microchip 24LC256 32Kx8 I2C EEPROM. Up to eight of these can be used to give a total of 256Kb of storage. c) read from an HMC6352 digital compass The user-callable I2C functions in Armaide are straightforward: PROCEDURE Read(address: INTEGER; CONST params: <anytype>; VAR data: <anytype>); PROCEDURE Ready(address: INTEGER): INTEGER; PROCEDURE Write(address: INTEGER; CONST params, data: <anytype>); As Armaide uses the Oberon-07 programming language it already knows how many bytes there are in each data type so (conveniently) there is no need to pass any 'byte count' parameters. The two editions of Armaide (Standard / Professional Edition) cost $69 / $149 respectively which should satisfy your 'cheap' requirement. You can download an evaluation copy from: http://www.armaide.com -- Chris Burrows CFB Software Armaide: ARM Integrated Development Environment http://www.armaide.com
From: Frank Buss on 29 Mar 2010 23:07 geomet wrote: > Needed: > - 3.3V > - in circuit programming > - I2C I/O > - low power sleep mode > > Wanted: > - cheap / free compiler > - on board RAM / EEPROM / Flash memory for logging (64K min) > > What I'm trying to do: > Log measurements from a sensor IC that communicates via I2C. You can use external Flash memory, e.g. this one: http://search.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?Detail&name=M25PE20-VMN6TPCT-ND There are many microcontroller companies, which provides free C compilers, e.g. Microchip and Cypress. -- Frank Buss, fb(a)frank-buss.de http://www.frank-buss.de, http://www.it4-systems.de
From: Mark Borgerson on 29 Mar 2010 23:28
In article <d5fc55c3-9ce7-4a38-afa2- 7300a9952ccc(a)l18g2000prm.googlegroups.com>, ross.g.marchant(a)gmail.com says... > Hi All, > > I'm after a recommendation for a microcontroller with the following > features: > > Needed: > - 3.3V > - in circuit programming > - I2C I/O > - low power sleep mode > > Wanted: > - cheap / free compiler > - on board RAM / EEPROM / Flash memory for logging (64K min) > > What I'm trying to do: > Log measurements from a sensor IC that communicates via I2C. > Been there, done that. Used an MSP430 and SD card for the logging. If you want to log to the onboard flash memory, you'll be more limited with the MSP430 series. I use the Imagecraft compiler. About $250. Good technical support and prompt response to problems. Another $100 gets you the NoIce debugger. Very handy and well supported. Unless you alread have a JTAG system, plan on another $100 for a USB-JTAG interface for programming and debugging. I don't know if a total cost of ~$350 counts as cheap for you--- but I made that back on my first project and put money in the bank! Mark Borgerson |