Hands on the $13 TI Stellaris LaunchPad

You are looking at my latest digital kit, an ARM-based Stellaris LaunchPad. At the heart of the board is an ARM Cortex-M4 32-bit CPU running at a modest (by today's standards) 80MHz. It comes along with 256K of FLASH and 32KB of SRAM.

Here’s a composite block diagram of the TI Stellaris LM4F microcontroller series that shows the large number of goodies you can get on one inexpensive piece of silicon:

It won't run Linux or Android or any other major operating system, but for writing executives, interrupt handlers and I/O manipulators in C or assembler down at the bare silicon, it has more than enough raw computational power.

You get a couple of switches and a RGB LED . The the pins broken out to .100″ male+female headers, which is nice. Notably, the male pins are facing up – opposite of Arduino, but perhaps more desirable. It means you can’t plunk it down into a breadboard, but then you couldn’t anyway since each row of headers is dual. Instead, it’ll be much easier to wire-wrap to, which is what you’d probably be using male pins for anyway.

Texas Instruments has done a good job of providing all the information you need to quickly get started with the LaunchPad. There is a wiki, a Stellaris Quickstart PDF, and even an instructional video that will walk you through writing your first application and flashing it to the the board.

TI has a comprehensive workshop that will get you up to speed on making the most of your LaunchPad. Alongside I also found this from TI on YouTube :

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4iW33BXXn8MlxEPsobGqrkDzu1rgTy0m]

Downloading and installation of the drivers and Code Composer Studio took a while, but once I had all the software installed, it took only a few minutes to compile and flash the demo project (the usual blinking-LED app). The sample applications provide a good starting point for your own projects, and there is also an online forum where you can consult with other Stellaris users.

Finally, I must mention that a hands-on, learn by doing course that shows you how to build real-world embedded systems started January 22nd. The course has been designed not only to explain how electronic gadgets are designed, developed, and built as embedded systems but also to get students to build circuits and program a microcontroller using C.

UT.6.01x Embedded Systems - Shape the World comes from The University of Texas at Austin and is an online version of a required course for all students embarking on Electrical and Computer Engineering there. It is being taught by Jon Valvano and Ramesh Yerraballi who introduce the course in this video.

So, assuming you’re interested in getting your hands on one of these powerful little kits, head over to Texas Instruments. For $13, you really can’t go wrong….

For Masr El ma7rosa followers :) actually you -as I did- can get one for around 200 LE included shipping, from Electroniaty Store

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Hands on the $13 TI Stellaris LaunchPad

You're looking at my latest digital gadget, an ARM-based Stellaris LaunchPad. At the heart of the board is an ARM Cortex-M4 32-bit CPU running at a modest (by today's standards) 80MHz. It comes along with 256K of FLASH and 32KB of SRAM.

Here’s a composite block diagram of the TI Stellaris series that shows the large number of goodies you can get on one inexpensive piece of silicon:


It won't run Linux or Android or any other major operating system, but for writing executives, interrupt handlers and I/O manipulators in C or assembler down at the bare silicon, it has more than enough raw computational power.

You get a couple of switches and an RGB LED. Finally, the pins broken out to .100″ male+female headers, which is nice. Notably, the male pins are facing up – opposite of Arduino, but perhaps more desirable. It means you can’t plunk it down into a breadboard, but then you couldn’t anyway since each row of headers is dual. Instead, it’ll be much easier to wire-wrap to, which is what you’d probably be using male pins for anyway.