Lpc2000

--- In lpc2000@yahoogroups.com, "Frantz Robinson"
<frantz.robinson@...> wrote:
>
> A lot of great ideas here, thank you and thanks to everyone who
> responded!
> IT seems to me there are some recurring themes;
> It makes me wonder if there isn't an opportunity here to define a very
> minimalist open standard, miniature SBC format specifically tailored to
> existing and foreseeable capabilities of the Philips LPC ARM MCU's( no
> harm if others want to support it too) which allows any vendor to make
> compatible but unique CPU boards and expansion modules which could be
> mixed & matched to assemble any kind of ARM-based embedded product- or
> is it just late and I've started to hallucinate? ;-)


Franz,

In my experience evaluation/developementboards don't last much longer
than a week before the end up on the big pile in the closet.
I don't like to do things twice, so I reather develope software on the
end-product. In that perspective, there's nothing wrong with the
concept of using a plug-on board for both evaluation as well as for
your end-product. Most software guys don't want to bother with all the
hardware for each new application, and they shouldn't.
Within our company we do a lot of projects and everyone seems to use
his own favorite chips and developement tools. In practice this means
that no one is able to service the projects of others...
We use al kind of PIC's, 8051's, c167, AVR's and ARM's. (besides from
bigger proc's) A short time ago we decided to switch over to one
single family for all future projects, if posible. it seems to me that
the LPC-ARM is the most suitable family for this. Starting with
LPC2101 and up to the LPC2888(at this moment)
Standardising software is even more rewarding.

What I'm trying to say is that it is better(and cheaper) to use a
standardised half-product for small series (and evaluation too) with
plenty of extra memory and peripherals and above all standard software
libs.
If you are building a product in bigger quant. you want to have a
tailor made board anyhow...besides that, chips like LPC288X with
fine-pitch BGA are hardly suitable in small series.

So in my point of view, it would be nice to have a open standard for
LPC2xxx plug-on boards. I have to make something like this anyway. If
I can then build my application board and buy a proc-board for it,
it'll save me a lot of time in the future. Processor-boards that are
used more frequently, we can make ourselves...seems fair.

I wouldn't mind putting some time into it, if anyone is interested.
  
Frank