Looking for a low-cost development kit

For my hobby work, I am looking for a low-cost development kit to
develope a simple embedded system. This system will measure the temperature
and heart beat rate, compare them with a predefined table which implements
some health-care knowledge, then provide some useful information. This
development kit should be low-cost, support C programming, debugging, better
with JTAG or other on-site debugging. It should support at least one type of
popular microprocessors, or a mainstream FPGA,
and easy to use. Could anybody recommend me some? Thank you in advance.

Johnson

Johnson

Can you elaborate on your I/O requirements as this may affect what is
best for your application.

Most of the board vendors in the FPGA world like ourselves don't
supply boards as bundled software kits as such. The software aspect
tends to come from whichever processor core is being used. However
there are one or two Xilinx and Altera kits that include some sort of
tools version with the boards for MicroBlaze and Nios respectively but
they don't tend to be in hobby engineer price area.

For the lowest cost you may have to think about seperate solution for
a microprocessor and board. There various microprocessor cores on
Opencores that are based on popular things like Z80 and so on and
there are lots of tools out there for that common processor. There
also things like 8086/8 cores available from third party vendors
http://www.ht-lab.com/hardware/drigmorn1/drigmorn1.html but these do
cost.

John Adair
Enterpoint Ltd.

On 23 Mar, 05:08, "Johnson L" <gpsab...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> For my hobby work, I am looking for a low-cost development kit to
> develope a simple embedded system. This system will measure the temperature
> and heart beat rate, compare them with a predefined table which implements
> some health-care knowledge, then provide some useful information. This
> development kit should be low-cost, support C programming, debugging, better
> with JTAG or other on-site debugging. It should support at least one type of
> popular microprocessors, or a mainstream FPGA,
> and easy to use. Could anybody recommend me some? Thank you in advance.
>
> Johnson

"John Adair" <g1@enterpoint.co.uk> wrote in message 
news:a38658ca-69a3-4af4-bfde-1c4abf7f7264@37g2000yqp.googlegroups.com...
> Johnson
>
> Can you elaborate on your I/O requirements as this may affect what is
> best for your application.
>
> Most of the board vendors in the FPGA world like ourselves don't
> supply boards as bundled software kits as such. The software aspect
> tends to come from whichever processor core is being used. However
> there are one or two Xilinx and Altera kits that include some sort of
> tools version with the boards for MicroBlaze and Nios respectively but
> they don't tend to be in hobby engineer price area.
>
> For the lowest cost you may have to think about seperate solution for
> a microprocessor and board. There various microprocessor cores on
> Opencores that are based on popular things like Z80 and so on and
> there are lots of tools out there for that common processor. There
> also things like 8086/8 cores available from third party vendors
> http://www.ht-lab.com/hardware/drigmorn1/drigmorn1.html but these do
> cost.
>
> John Adair
> Enterpoint Ltd.
>
> On 23 Mar, 05:08, "Johnson L" <gpsab...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> For my hobby work, I am looking for a low-cost development kit to
>> develope a simple embedded system. This system will measure the 
>> temperature
>> and heart beat rate, compare them with a predefined table which 
>> implements
>> some health-care knowledge, then provide some useful information. This
>> development kit should be low-cost, support C programming, debugging, 
>> better
>> with JTAG or other on-site debugging. It should support at least one type 
>> of
>> popular microprocessors, or a mainstream FPGA,
>> and easy to use. Could anybody recommend me some? Thank you in advance.
>>
>> Johnson
>

Thanks, John, your answer is very informative and helpful. However, as a 
hobby engineer I don't know how to elaborate the I/O requirements. Could you 
please give me a simple example?
As for now, I would like the sensors being connected to the microprocessor 
in a simple way, such as I2C or UART. I possibly also need a port for 
BLUETOOTH or ZIGBEE to send out the commands to a wireless peripheral.
BTW, if I understand it correct, there is no free or low-cost development 
kit for FPGA, right?
Johnson

Johnson

It's not quite true that there are not free tools for FPGAs. Both the
2 biggest vendors Xilinx and Altera have free tools for building the
hardware side for the smaller end FPGAs themselves. Processor support
tools specifically Xilinx has 2 soft core processors that they support
- PicoBlaze and MicroBlaze. Altera have Nios. Picoblaze I believe a
third party has done a C compiler and the group probably has more
details that I do. MicroBlaze (EDK) and Nios toolsets are essentially
paid for tools although there are sometimes evaluation versions around
that are good for short term use.

On I/O things like acceptable voltage levels e.g. 3.3V or 5V
signalling requirements are important. Many modern FPGAs cannot
tolerate 5V signalling levels directly without some protection, or
level shift, circuits. Particular protocols like I2C will need to be
driven and controlled by some logic function within the FPGA user
design. If you are using external modules for bluetooth etc. then
again you need to use whatever signalling levels and protocols are
required to transfer data and setup to the external modules.

John Adair
Enterpoint Ltd.

On 23 Mar, 21:36, "Johnson L" <gpsab...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> "John Adair" <g...@enterpoint.co.uk> wrote in message
>
> news:a38658ca-69a3-4af4-bfde-1c4abf7f7264@37g2000yqp.googlegroups.com...
>
>
>
>
>
> > Johnson
>
> > Can you elaborate on your I/O requirements as this may affect what is
> > best for your application.
>
> > Most of the board vendors in the FPGA world like ourselves don't
> > supply boards as bundled software kits as such. The software aspect
> > tends to come from whichever processor core is being used. However
> > there are one or two Xilinx and Altera kits that include some sort of
> > tools version with the boards for MicroBlaze and Nios respectively but
> > they don't tend to be in hobby engineer price area.
>
> > For the lowest cost you may have to think about seperate solution for
> > a microprocessor and board. There various microprocessor cores on
> > Opencores that are based on popular things like Z80 and so on and
> > there are lots of tools out there for that common processor. There
> > also things like 8086/8 cores available from third party vendors
> >http://www.ht-lab.com/hardware/drigmorn1/drigmorn1.htmlbut these do
> > cost.
>
> > John Adair
> > Enterpoint Ltd.
>
> > On 23 Mar, 05:08, "Johnson L" <gpsab...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >> For my hobby work, I am looking for a low-cost development kit to
> >> develope a simple embedded system. This system will measure the
> >> temperature
> >> and heart beat rate, compare them with a predefined table which
> >> implements
> >> some health-care knowledge, then provide some useful information. This
> >> development kit should be low-cost, support C programming, debugging,
> >> better
> >> with JTAG or other on-site debugging. It should support at least one type
> >> of
> >> popular microprocessors, or a mainstream FPGA,
> >> and easy to use. Could anybody recommend me some? Thank you in advance.
>
> >> Johnson
>
> Thanks, John, your answer is very informative and helpful. However, as a
> hobby engineer I don't know how to elaborate the I/O requirements. Could you
> please give me a simple example?
> As for now, I would like the sensors being connected to the microprocessor
> in a simple way, such as I2C or UART. I possibly also need a port for
> BLUETOOTH or ZIGBEE to send out the commands to a wireless peripheral.
> BTW, if I understand it correct, there is no free or low-cost development
> kit for FPGA, right?
> Johnson- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

I just got an FPGA development kit from Lattice - 2200 CLB's, USB
(FX2) Interface, a software starter kit, and an 8-bit embedded
processor.

$75 including tax & Shipping.

Software license expires every 6 months; I'm guessing that they will
renew it.  Software is reminiscent of Xilinx back in the ISE-4.2 days
(clumsy, but functional).  The embedded processor (Mico8) looks -very-
interesting: if I'm seeing things correctly, they chose 'wishbone' for
their on-chip bus.

AL

On Mar 23, 3:14 pm, John Adair <g...@enterpoint.co.uk> wrote:
> Johnson
>
> It's not quite true that there are not free tools for FPGAs. Both the
> 2 biggest vendors Xilinx and Altera have free tools for building the
> hardware side for the smaller end FPGAs themselves. Processor support
> tools specifically Xilinx has 2 soft core processors that they support
> - PicoBlaze and MicroBlaze. Altera have Nios. Picoblaze I believe a
> third party has done a C compiler and the group probably has more
> details that I do. MicroBlaze (EDK) and Nios toolsets are essentially
> paid for tools although there are sometimes evaluation versions around
> that are good for short term use.
>
> On I/O things like acceptable voltage levels e.g. 3.3V or 5V
> signalling requirements are important. Many modern FPGAs cannot
> tolerate 5V signalling levels directly without some protection, or
> level shift, circuits. Particular protocols like I2C will need to be
> driven and controlled by some logic function within the FPGA user
> design. If you are using external modules for bluetooth etc. then
> again you need to use whatever signalling levels and protocols are
> required to transfer data and setup to the external modules.
>
> John Adair
> Enterpoint Ltd.
>
> On 23 Mar, 21:36, "Johnson L" <gpsab...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > "John Adair" <g...@enterpoint.co.uk> wrote in message
>
> >news:a38658ca-69a3-4af4-bfde-1c4abf7f7264@37g2000yqp.googlegroups.com...
>
> > > Johnson
>
> > > Can you elaborate on your I/O requirements as this may affect what is
> > > best for your application.
>
> > > Most of the board vendors in the FPGA world like ourselves don't
> > > supply boards as bundled software kits as such. The software aspect
> > > tends to come from whichever processor core is being used. However
> > > there are one or two Xilinx and Altera kits that include some sort of
> > > tools version with the boards for MicroBlaze and Nios respectively but
> > > they don't tend to be in hobby engineer price area.
>
> > > For the lowest cost you may have to think about seperate solution for
> > > a microprocessor and board. There various microprocessor cores on
> > > Opencores that are based on popular things like Z80 and so on and
> > > there are lots of tools out there for that common processor. There
> > > also things like 8086/8 cores available from third party vendors
> > >http://www.ht-lab.com/hardware/drigmorn1/drigmorn1.htmlbutthese do
> > > cost.
>
> > > John Adair
> > > Enterpoint Ltd.
>
> > > On 23 Mar, 05:08, "Johnson L" <gpsab...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > >> For my hobby work, I am looking for a low-cost development kit to
> > >> develope a simple embedded system. This system will measure the
> > >> temperature
> > >> and heart beat rate, compare them with a predefined table which
> > >> implements
> > >> some health-care knowledge, then provide some useful information. This
> > >> development kit should be low-cost, support C programming, debugging,
> > >> better
> > >> with JTAG or other on-site debugging. It should support at least one type
> > >> of
> > >> popular microprocessors, or a mainstream FPGA,
> > >> and easy to use. Could anybody recommend me some? Thank you in advance.
>
> > >> Johnson
>
> > Thanks, John, your answer is very informative and helpful. However, as a
> > hobby engineer I don't know how to elaborate the I/O requirements. Could you
> > please give me a simple example?
> > As for now, I would like the sensors being connected to the microprocessor
> > in a simple way, such as I2C or UART. I possibly also need a port for
> > BLUETOOTH or ZIGBEE to send out the commands to a wireless peripheral.
> > BTW, if I understand it correct, there is no free or low-cost development
> > kit for FPGA, right?
> > Johnson- Hide quoted text -
>
> > - Show quoted text -

Johnson L wrote:
> For my hobby work, I am looking for a low-cost development kit to
> develope a simple embedded system. This system will measure the temperature
> and heart beat rate, compare them with a predefined table which implements
> some health-care knowledge, then provide some useful information. This
> development kit should be low-cost, support C programming, debugging, better
> with JTAG or other on-site debugging. It should support at least one type of
> popular microprocessors, or a mainstream FPGA,
> and easy to use. Could anybody recommend me some? Thank you in advance.
> 
> Johnson
> 
> 

It's hard to get a functional FPGA development kit that's more 
affordable than Avnet's Spartan-3A Eval Kit. 
(http://tinyurl.com/blhcar) $50 gets you an XC3S400A-4FTG256C, two types 
of flash, a USB bridge, several type of I/O, and a Cypress PSoC.  Even 
better nothing else is required to program it (you don't need the $200 
Xilinx cable).

And for really cheap TI's eZ430 development kit is hard to beat - it's 
only $20. (http://focus.ti.com/docs/toolsw/folders/print/ez430-f2013.html)
The MSP430 is a pretty low end processor, but the kick-start version of 
the IAR tools does allow you to develop in C and debug on the target.

There are lots of well done, not too expensive boards at Digilent 
(http://www.digilentinc.com), along with programming tools, various 
addons, and example code.  They have been good about answering my 
questions too.

(I have no commercial interest in any of these, they're just sources 
that I've found useful.)

Chris

Well, both the price and the product sounds great! Thanks for sharing!
BTW, the software license expires every 6 months. Do you think they will 
charge me for renewing the license?

Johnson


"LittleAlex" <alex.louie@email.com> wrote in message 
news:c1ec1088-a658-46f5-b5b3-d66cb8fe327f@v23g2000pro.googlegroups.com...
>I just got an FPGA development kit from Lattice - 2200 CLB's, USB
> (FX2) Interface, a software starter kit, and an 8-bit embedded
> processor.
>
> $75 including tax & Shipping.
>
> Software license expires every 6 months; I'm guessing that they will
> renew it.  Software is reminiscent of Xilinx back in the ISE-4.2 days
> (clumsy, but functional).  The embedded processor (Mico8) looks -very-
> interesting: if I'm seeing things correctly, they chose 'wishbone' for
> their on-chip bus.
>
> AL
>
> On Mar 23, 3:14 pm, John Adair <g...@enterpoint.co.uk> wrote:
>> Johnson
>>
>> It's not quite true that there are not free tools for FPGAs. Both the
>> 2 biggest vendors Xilinx and Altera have free tools for building the
>> hardware side for the smaller end FPGAs themselves. Processor support
>> tools specifically Xilinx has 2 soft core processors that they support
>> - PicoBlaze and MicroBlaze. Altera have Nios. Picoblaze I believe a
>> third party has done a C compiler and the group probably has more
>> details that I do. MicroBlaze (EDK) and Nios toolsets are essentially
>> paid for tools although there are sometimes evaluation versions around
>> that are good for short term use.
>>
>> On I/O things like acceptable voltage levels e.g. 3.3V or 5V
>> signalling requirements are important. Many modern FPGAs cannot
>> tolerate 5V signalling levels directly without some protection, or
>> level shift, circuits. Particular protocols like I2C will need to be
>> driven and controlled by some logic function within the FPGA user
>> design. If you are using external modules for bluetooth etc. then
>> again you need to use whatever signalling levels and protocols are
>> required to transfer data and setup to the external modules.
>>
>> John Adair
>> Enterpoint Ltd.
>>
>> On 23 Mar, 21:36, "Johnson L" <gpsab...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>> > "John Adair" <g...@enterpoint.co.uk> wrote in message
>>
>> >news:a38658ca-69a3-4af4-bfde-1c4abf7f7264@37g2000yqp.googlegroups.com...
>>
>> > > Johnson
>>
>> > > Can you elaborate on your I/O requirements as this may affect what is
>> > > best for your application.
>>
>> > > Most of the board vendors in the FPGA world like ourselves don't
>> > > supply boards as bundled software kits as such. The software aspect
>> > > tends to come from whichever processor core is being used. However
>> > > there are one or two Xilinx and Altera kits that include some sort of
>> > > tools version with the boards for MicroBlaze and Nios respectively 
>> > > but
>> > > they don't tend to be in hobby engineer price area.
>>
>> > > For the lowest cost you may have to think about seperate solution for
>> > > a microprocessor and board. There various microprocessor cores on
>> > > Opencores that are based on popular things like Z80 and so on and
>> > > there are lots of tools out there for that common processor. There
>> > > also things like 8086/8 cores available from third party vendors
>> > >http://www.ht-lab.com/hardware/drigmorn1/drigmorn1.htmlbutthese do
>> > > cost.
>>
>> > > John Adair
>> > > Enterpoint Ltd.
>>
>> > > On 23 Mar, 05:08, "Johnson L" <gpsab...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> > >> For my hobby work, I am looking for a low-cost development kit to
>> > >> develope a simple embedded system. This system will measure the
>> > >> temperature
>> > >> and heart beat rate, compare them with a predefined table which
>> > >> implements
>> > >> some health-care knowledge, then provide some useful information. 
>> > >> This
>> > >> development kit should be low-cost, support C programming, 
>> > >> debugging,
>> > >> better
>> > >> with JTAG or other on-site debugging. It should support at least one 
>> > >> type
>> > >> of
>> > >> popular microprocessors, or a mainstream FPGA,
>> > >> and easy to use. Could anybody recommend me some? Thank you in 
>> > >> advance.
>>
>> > >> Johnson
>>
>> > Thanks, John, your answer is very informative and helpful. However, as 
>> > a
>> > hobby engineer I don't know how to elaborate the I/O requirements. 
>> > Could you
>> > please give me a simple example?
>> > As for now, I would like the sensors being connected to the 
>> > microprocessor
>> > in a simple way, such as I2C or UART. I possibly also need a port for
>> > BLUETOOTH or ZIGBEE to send out the commands to a wireless peripheral.
>> > BTW, if I understand it correct, there is no free or low-cost 
>> > development
>> > kit for FPGA, right?
>> > Johnson- Hide quoted text -
>>
>> > - Show quoted text -
>

I also want to know, is there any low-cost development kit for DSP as well? 
I
possibly need some filter function in the software as well so I am also
thinking about DSP. Anybody can help?

Thanks.

Johnson


"Johnson L" <gpsabove@yahoo.com> wrote in message 
news:FPExl.73664$FI5.25671@newsfe07.iad...
> For my hobby work, I am looking for a low-cost development kit to
> develope a simple embedded system. This system will measure the 
> temperature
> and heart beat rate, compare them with a predefined table which implements
> some health-care knowledge, then provide some useful information. This
> development kit should be low-cost, support C programming, debugging, 
> better
> with JTAG or other on-site debugging. It should support at least one type 
> of
> popular microprocessors, or a mainstream FPGA,
> and easy to use. Could anybody recommend me some? Thank you in advance.
>
> Johnson
>
> 

"Chris Abele" <ccabele@yahoo.com> wrote in message 
news:IfadnV9xaJ9I2FXUnZ2dnUVZ_oninZ2d@giganews.com...
> Johnson L wrote:
>> For my hobby work, I am looking for a low-cost development kit to
>> develope a simple embedded system. This system will measure the 
>> temperature
>> and heart beat rate, compare them with a predefined table which 
>> implements
>> some health-care knowledge, then provide some useful information. This
>> development kit should be low-cost, support C programming, debugging, 
>> better
>> with JTAG or other on-site debugging. It should support at least one type 
>> of
>> popular microprocessors, or a mainstream FPGA,
>> and easy to use. Could anybody recommend me some? Thank you in advance.
>>
>> Johnson
>>
>>
>
> It's hard to get a functional FPGA development kit that's more affordable 
> than Avnet's Spartan-3A Eval Kit. (http://tinyurl.com/blhcar) $50 gets you 
> an XC3S400A-4FTG256C, two types of flash, a USB bridge, several type of 
> I/O, and a Cypress PSoC.  Even better nothing else is required to program 
> it (you don't need the $200 Xilinx cable).
>
> And for really cheap TI's eZ430 development kit is hard to beat - it's 
> only $20. (http://focus.ti.com/docs/toolsw/folders/print/ez430-f2013.html)
> The MSP430 is a pretty low end processor, but the kick-start version of 
> the IAR tools does allow you to develop in C and debug on the target.
>
> There are lots of well done, not too expensive boards at Digilent 
> (http://www.digilentinc.com), along with programming tools, various 
> addons, and example code.  They have been good about answering my 
> questions too.
>
> (I have no commercial interest in any of these, they're just sources that 
> I've found useful.)
>
> Chris

Chris, thank you very much for sharing them! The kits look awesome!

BTW, for Avnet's Spartan-3A Eval Kit, nothing else is required to program 
it. However, I need to program it since I need to implement some generic 
functions written in C. So it isn't an option for me.

Johnson

I found the PIC microcontroller, and it includes free IDE. From the link 
below, it seems the costs are minimum. Any objection or suggestion?

http://www.sparkfun.com/tutorial/ARM/ARM_Cross_Development_with_Eclipse.pdf


"Johnson L" <gpsabove@yahoo.com> wrote in message 
news:FPExl.73664$FI5.25671@newsfe07.iad...
> For my hobby work, I am looking for a low-cost development kit to
> develope a simple embedded system. This system will measure the 
> temperature
> and heart beat rate, compare them with a predefined table which implements
> some health-care knowledge, then provide some useful information. This
> development kit should be low-cost, support C programming, debugging, 
> better
> with JTAG or other on-site debugging. It should support at least one type 
> of
> popular microprocessors, or a mainstream FPGA,
> and easy to use. Could anybody recommend me some? Thank you in advance.
>
> Johnson
>
>