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Comment by subhobroto | Hacker News Reader

With the supercheap sub $5 ESP32/STM32 boards (both have Arduino core support) and their equally cheap add onboards for camera, ethernet or USB OTG - who exactly are using the Teensy line today and why?

I'm genuinely curious.

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For me it is rock solid USB and known quality. I use them as a bridge between analog/ADC board and USB, doing some buffering and signal processing for my spectroscopy projects.

Think of it as an ARM prototyping tool.

You would switch to the bare chip for production. [1]

Of course, for low production runs, you could stick the Teensy board in your product.

[1] https://www.nxp.com/part/MIMXRT1062CVL5A#/

The $5 boards aren't 600MHz M7's with loads of SRAM and Flash.

Maybe, but what scenarios are there where you'd want that, be willing to spend 30 dollars on your microcontroller solution and not benefit from a more capable linux SOC? (With an optional $3 M0/M3 for realtime if required)

Yes, it's not needed for every use case. There are some obvious places where 600MHz helps, either for input sample rate or output waveform. The Teensy 4.0 is $20, with the same processor as the 4.1.

Also, 100 mA current draw with the CPU at full speed. For some use cases, that is helpful...versus the RPi.

Would this Teensy be suitable for real time audio processing? I mean little-to-no latency.

> little-to-no latency

I don't follow Teensy deeply but both the ESP32/STM32 are being used for real time audio processing.

I'm using it to decode DTMF without using a one more DIP IC.

I'm sure there's some latency involved but for my use case, the bang for the buck is great.

These are substantially more powerful than both of those families.

https://www.st.com/content/st_com/en/products/microcontrolle...

What is your point? This is more powerful than all of the ones on your linked page.

Marginally. The STM32H7 series offers Cortex-M7 cores at up to 480 MHz, with a Cortex-M4 coprocessor on some parts at 240 MHz. It's not quite as fast as the i.MXRT1052, but it's damn close.

The posted coremark scores do not support your claim that NXP iMXRT1062 is substantially more powerful. If I take these numbers at face value, then STM32 promises up to 45% more perf.

Also substantially more expensive, especially compared to the likes of the banana pi zero, which gets you four cores at 1.2Ghz, 512MB RAM, Linux and a GPU for 35% cheaper. Pair that with a Blue Pill STM32 for $3 if you need realtime and you still have money left over.

That looks like a great stack!

In the "Pi" family, for a Linux SBC, which pi/clone gives a good bang for the buck?

banana pi zero has shown up multiple times but since you are in the know, I wanted to ask what's a good SBC to run OpenWRT on, for example

> Blue Pill STM32 for $3

The Black Pill STM32 for $4 are an ever better value!

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