A special thanks to emh203 who has worked with us to create this wonderful series of videos covering general MCU topics and more specific Freescale Cup training.  We look forward to more videos in the coming months.  Stay tuned. Please, please, please like, rate and comment on the videos so we get the feedback!  Thanks and enjoy! Getting Started with Embedded Systems FRDM-KL25Z Orientation Freescale Cup Training

Embedded processors are highly optimized products.  When you just want a good general use processor, sifting through the many options to find the best one can be daunting.  Below are some excellent general-purpose use platforms that I recommend for academia.  Are there other options, you bet.  These are the best in class, most popular and great for learning. FRDM-KL25Z TWR-K60D100M Wand Board Teensy 3.0 Cost: $12.95 $99 ($169 for -KIT) $79/$99/$129 $19 Chip: Cortex-M0+ Cortex-M4 Cortex-A9 (Single/Dual/Quad core) Cortex-M4 On-Board Features: Minimal Good Good Very Minimal Expansion Capability Excellent Good Average Good Notable Features Arduino Shield Compatibility Program with mbed.org I/O options Android Jellybean, HDMI Plug into breadboard Program with Arduino IDE The Freedom Board (FRDM-KL25Z) This is a great starter board!  It's cheap($12.95), yet powerful and can be used in a wide variety of applications.  All FRDM- boards are pinned out in the Arduino shield standard so you have lots of expansion options.  The FRDM-KL25Z can be programmed with the normal 'industrial strength' IDE you can also use mbed.org which sets it apart from many other products in this list for ease-of-use. Teensy (Teensy3) Made by PJRC.  For those that want to put a high performance 32-bit MCU on a breadboard.  Also, per the PJRC website you you are able to use the Arduino IDE.  The hardware is about as bare-bones as it gets, but the nice small footprint and breadboard ability gives you lots of flexibility to add your own custom I/O. The Tower System (TWR-K60D100M-KIT) The Tower System is another platform with a multitude of options.  With the Tower System you get access to much more I/O and is designed with higher performance applications in mind.  The particular variant I most often recommend is the TWR-K60D100M simply because it has so many features all packed in.  USB, Ethernet, Crypto engine, CAN, SPI, I2C and the list goes on.  Couple that with plenty of processing muscle with a Cortex-M4 CPU running at 100Mhz. Wand Board.org (Wand Board) The Cortex-M series is primarily intended for embedded control applications.  Whereas the Cortex-A series is built for graphical and multimedia applications.  Wandboard.org has been getting a lot of attention in the community as a Rasberry PI, Beagle Bone alternative(comparison chart).  Another similar product, still in development, is UDOO so stay tuned for that one.

As a maker and a professional engineer I always try to keep up with new tools to tinker with.  Being a Freescaler I get especially jazzed about ones using our chips.  But, with so many fish in the sea it's hard to get the word out about all the options out there.  So for your viewing pleasure below is a list of up and coming "development boards" for both Makers and Professionals.  All of these boards use Freescale silicon, but the actual board/product is not made by Freescale.  Add comments below with anything I should be made aware of and any reviews or comments of the ones I mentioned. In the microcontrollers corner... Teensy 3.1 -Weighing in at 2.95 grams, don't be fooled by this one's size; it really packs a punch.  But the board is just the beginning, you can program the board using Arduino Sketch, and Paul has cooked up some cool new audio and video libraries that take advantage of the extra horsepower in the Kinetis K20 chip. WunderBar -This one wins the award for creative naming and packaging.  Basically, you have a main board and several sensor boards.  You snap off the sensor boards (like breaking off a piece of chocolate) and attach them to your desired application.  Out of the box, basic board level stuff is taken care of so you can spend more time working on your tablet/smartphone application. Enter the hybrid cross-overs These two boards have both MCU and MPU's onboard for the best of both worlds.  Generally speaking the MPU handles more multimedia rich tasks, while the MCU handles real-time operations such as controlling motors, monitoring sensors and other various functions. UDOO - After coming off a very successful Kickstarter campaign the UDOO board is gaining some serious traction. You can pick from a dual or quad core Freescale i.MX6 processor with the Atmel SAM32 (aka the Arduino chip) and let the fun begin.  UDoo has a thriving community and really caters well to the "Maker" community. Freedog -  Combines a Atheros AR9331 and Kinetis KL25Z  The Atheros processor supports Linino, a Linux distribution based on OpenWRT. The board has built-in Ethernet and WiFi support, which is a huge plus! The future of personal computing Things are really heating up in the microprocessor corner with lots of new i.MX enabled development boards.  These boards may not go toe-to-toe with your laptop or desktop PC, but the size to performance ratio is just incredible.  For grins I have listed the boards below from largest to smallest. Riot Board- Another SBC (Single Board Computer) solution featuring a single core i.MX 6 application processor.  This board is capable of many things but the focus is for Android development.  I had Netflix and Pandora running on my home TV in less than 30 minutes.  Cool if used for nothing more than a media center! Wand Board - You can pick between single, dual and quad core flavors.  Under the hood this platform is a SOM (System On Module) allowing you to pop this super small plug into your creation and accessorize!  The dual and quad core flavor comes with built in WiFi  and Bluetooth provides a lot of connectivity options. [NEW: Added 7/2/2014] Hummingboard - Several people contributed this in the comments section and I was notified this is now available for purchase.  On paper it looks pretty sweet, same price as the Rasberry Pi but with a much more powerful from a processor performance and peripheral perspective.  I am going to try to get my hands on one and will update you! CuBox - I would put this in more of the finished products camp and not really a development tool, but it is still VERY cool.  A 2 inch cube mini-computer.  Nicely polished packaging and Android O/S, it makes my desktop PC look like a relic. Warp Board - Aimed squarely at wearables, this thing is so small and oh by the way it runs Android and is cranking away at 1 GHz.  It's slated for a end of summer release, but you can start getting updates now from their website!

Which Platform to use?  Qorivva or Kinetis? Both are 32-bit devices. The Qorivva products, a Power architecture, are used widely in the automotive industry.  It has specialized peripherals such as CAN and LIN.  Automotive products are built tough, to high industry standards. The Kinetis products, ARM M4 architecture, are widely used.  You will find it in lots of everyday devices and industrial automation (such as robotics). It can support a lot of consumer peripherals such as USB, WiFi, and Graphical Displays. Which platform is more powerful or easy to use? Both supported processors are powerful 32 bit microcontrollers with similar software peripherals. Take an hour or two to research the evaluation boards on the Freescale sites and their underlying technologies. Think through the design and implementation process of connecting various components like the motor, battery and servo, to the evaluation board. The Tower System provides a modular prototyping platform, and the TRK evaluation board has many features. What level of support does a technology have? For the Cup Challenge, you may use any Freescale microcontroller. There are reference designs here on the wiki and TONS of code and examples on the Freescale site. Students should speak with their professor, and check out their respective documentation and software examples to make a choice. Having on campus support is invaluable in this case. There are online communities for the respective technologies as well. Research which technologies are have more active user communities which best complement the teams design approach? Obviously the Freescale Cup Wiki itself is a resource, and provides details on how to use two different microcontrollers - so it might be best to limit choices to one of these two supported platforms.