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Comment by imrehg | Hacker News Reader

I'm designing an Arduino-compatible board[1] that supposed to have an FTDI chip for ease of design. This whole thing makes me reconsider it, what would be the best way to replace it some other solution? Do I have any real option if I want to stay within the Open Parts Library[2]?

[1]: https://www.hwtrek.com/product_preview/VTZUZV9k [2]: http://www.seeedstudio.com/wiki/Open_parts_library

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They're not in the OPL, but Microchip makes several chips that support full-speed USB, and they provide a CDC driver, too. I prefer them to using an Arduino because almost all of them are available in a DIP form factor, making them great for prototyping projects; available with different number of pins and features (10 vs 12-bit ADC, etc); and cost less than an ATMEGA328 +FTDI. Some of the chips are fully USB compliant without a crystal.

I've never used it, but Microchip's IDE for their C compiler and debugger is cross-platform and will work on Linux/Mac/Windows. I prefer to program them in JAL, a Pascal-like language that is easy to learn that has a large library of functions available. There's syntax highlighting available for it in Vim :-) .

If you're committed to Arduino, there's an open-source project (http:www.pinguino.cc) that has its own Python-based IDE that will take Arduino code, convert it to SDCC C code, compile it to assembly, then flash a Microchip chip.

not sure, but shouldn't you be able to use the ATMEGA32U4-AU as the microcontroller and get usb for free? Here's a good place to start for a bootloader that'll do your usb setup for you... http://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=124459.15

Just looked at your product idea, see you already had planned a good microcontroller. Maybe replace the FTDI with the ATMEGA and make a firmware that'll allow in circuit programming so you really can't brick the main microcontroller?

Yeah, people suggested something similar before[1], and definitely will research it. Using two of the ATmegas might not work (the miniPCIe form factor is tiny!), I wonder if a single chip could do that, at the expense of maybe some storage? The current setup needs almost no custom work, and for the proof-of-concept version I'd rather not do firmware programming if I can avoid it (but then maybe I can't be picky about the FTDI:)

Thanks for the suggestion!

[1]: http://www.reddit.com/r/arduino/comments/2ehosj/pcieduino_fe...

Look at the datasheet, it's got a usb DFU bootloader loaded by default. :) Biggest issue would just be making sure it can switch over to serial mode, but that's already done in arduino's, so should be pretty easy.

Best way would be designing it with GENUINE parts instead of planning to populate your own boards with ebay specials.

People are allowed to choose the parts they want to use. I call it voting with your wallet. Maybe FTDI will realize that people don't want to use their products when they pull stunts like this.

So basically "we will show FTDI by CONTINUING to not use their parts at all". People affected didnt want to use FTDI parts in the first place, they wanted fly by night $2 with free shipping special.

No, it's more "I could use FTDI parts(and I bet someplace like seeed would use the real thing), but if they are going to release drivers that have a kill command baked in(and we've seen that it's on purpose), I'm not gonna use them"

actually seed is one of confirmed sources of fakes :) someone had one of these http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/UartSBee-V5-p-1752.html?cPa...

go pid 0

Seed is a small shenzhen company, I woulndt expect them to have legit parts to begin with anyway.

so, yay, go with something other then FTDI, cause other companies don't seem to have the same fascination with killing clone chips. Alas, other companies actually try to make stuff cheaper and have more features.

No; people affected are people who bought some devices from someone who bought some devices from someone who wanted to use FTDI parts, who bought their parts from someone who bought their parts from someone who didn't want to use FTDI parts.

FTDI action hurts everyone except the ones they were targetting.

I'm designing with genuine parts of course, manufactured at Seeed. The problem is that if FTDI is doing monkey business and gets their driver revoked as many people suggesting on the list, my genuine part worth nothing either, my own customers are screwed over because of FTDI's bad moves.

So I'd rather not use FTDI altogether, if I can avoid it.

I'm yet to see someone who does mass production from ebay sourced components (bad price, not enough quantity). If I get parts from Digikey or Mouser, how can I check that they are genuine? I trust them more, but is there really a logical reason to trust any reseller in this sense? Screwed either way.

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