Armstrap: Open ARM development board | Hacker News Reader

Armstrap: Open ARM development board

armstrap.org

55 pointssigjuice7 comments

Open Hardware, 2-layers only; nice. At $59.99 this sounds like a good price point for a 168 MHz Cortex-M4.

Complete with datasheets and Gerber files: https://github.com/armstrap/armstrap_eagle/tree/master/1.0.0...

Only if you care about the jtag controller they added (and the tooling/portability/etc...), consider that if you just need a board with that processor you can get the STM32F4 Discovery (no spi-flash, more sensors) for $10 ($10 more buys you the version with an integrated 3.5" color lcd touchscreen): http://www.st.com/web/catalog/tools/FM116/SC959/SS1532/PF252...

A bit expensive for that amount of processing power as you can get an OSHW board with dual 1GHz A7 and 512MB of RAM for less:

https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/A20/A20-OLinuXino-...

People don't buy Cortex-M or microcontrollers in general for processing power, their for low power consumption, size and cost (thou this may not the the aim for project).

This might have been interesting several years ago, if the original STM32F4 Discovery boards never existed, or were more than $20.

The current STM32F4 Discovery board is less than $25, including 8M of SDRAM and an LCD display.

I think the site is trying to address a different need from the one you described. If you want a cheap ARM board with closed source debugging, PDF schematics, without the freedom to resell, you should get a corporate board (like the STM32F4 Discovery). You can learn and tinker in a very cost effective manner.

If you want an open source, free to resell, free to remix or change (with access to the CAD designs files), multiplatform, easy to hand solder, cheap to replicate in large quantities board, then an Armstrap Eagle is a better choice.

It looks like the Armstrap Eagle is a bit more expensive than those corporate boards but you'll probably be in a better position to ship your kickstarter ontime if you started with an open board from day one.

I hadn't seen the Black Magic Probe for JTAG debugging without the need for OpenOcd (et al). It gives you a GDB remote target directly on probe instead. Quite nice.

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