Lpc2000

The advantage to the LPC2148 series is they are small full system-on-chip 
that require minimal external components.  You can have an entire basic 
setup on a double sided board 2cm by 2cm.  If size and weight is a factor 
then these chips are a good idea.  Unfortunately it only has 40KB of RAM, 
so if you need more you'll either need to put on a serial flash chip or 
bitbang your own SRAM.  If you need to store data then a flash chip or even 
SD/MMC card may work out well.  You may want to check out Atmel's AT91SAM7S 
chip as well.

You say that you're designing the interface yourself, so you don't need to 
use CAN, so what about other interfaces?  How much distance will there be 
between the micro and the sensors?  How many sensors will you be 
interfacing to?  If the distance is small then you can always use I2C or 
SPI.  Even for medium distances these will work by adding in driver 
chips.  If you have a longer distance, you could try RS485 or even RS232 or 
even just plain TTL logic levels (possibly with a driver/isolator).  These 
are simpler than CAN AFAIK.  How noisy is the environment where these will 
need to operate?

-- Sean

At 15:39 2/10/2006, you wrote:
>--- In lpc2000@yahoogroups.com, David Hawkins <dwh@...> wrote:
> >
> > > Not a high volume project (less than five units per year)
> >
> > I guess another useful metric would be how much do you
> > plan to charge for such a device?
>
>I didn't actualy want this project. But I've dealt with this customer
>for a long time and they wanted _me_ to do it. I wouldn't agree to
>take it until they offered cost plus. I initialy budgeted $1k for dev
>tools.
>
> > For such a low-volume product, if price is not the issue,
> > then perhaps a pre-built module, if one exists, would be
> > an option. You could throw a little more weight into it
> > too, eg. a processor that runs a full OS.
>
>I fully expect to build a prototype with a pre-built module (maybe
>one of the olimex boards) but the installation is very mass sensitive
>so it will require a custom board. I'm not at all against a bigger
>proccessor, that's part of why I'm seeking advice from this group. If
>an ARM7 isn't a good fit for this type of application please say so.
>I haven't worked with any proccessors large enough to run a full OS
>(other than a PC) so I'm not sure what bennifits that can give me.
>
> > Thats not to say the LPCs are too lightweight. I like
> > them, and run the uCOS-II RTOS for my tinkering projects.
> >
> > However, I also tinker with other processors too.
> > I'm looking at Linux on a PowerPC for some other work.
> > The ColdFire processors have all the peripherals you
> > want too. For example, check out the Netburner modules
> > (<http://www.netburner.com),>http://www.netburner.com), or modules from
> > <http://www.cogcomp.com>http://www.cogcomp.com or 
> <http://www.logicpd.com.>http://www.logicpd.com.
> > Kontron has stuff too, and Gumstix, and ...
> >
> > Just a thought.
> > Dave
> >
>
>Thanks, I'll check those out.
>
>-Denny