My First Dev Board
My first ever dev board just arrived today!!
If you don't know what a development board is, check out this article. Often used in industry to write some driver code before the PCB arrives, also to test prototypes.
I planned to go with an STM32 Nucleo board. But later found a github repo from a weather balloon company that has good PR discussions. Also I liked datasheet of Microchip compared to datasheet/reference manual of ST.
They used SAM D21 microcontroller. So decided to go with a development board that has this microcontroller.
Found this relatively cheap, sexy red & black, cute tiny board.
The board has ATSAMD21G17 mcu. The D variant to be specific (ATSAMD21G17D).
AT: Atmel / Microchip Prefix
SAMD: Product Family - General Purpose Microcontroller
21: Product Series - Cortex M0+ CPU, Basic Feature Set + DMA + USB
G: Pin Count - 48 Pins (45 Pins for WLCSP)
17: Flash Memory Density - 128 KB
D: Device Variant - A (Default Variant), D (Silicon Revision G with RWWEE Support in 128KB memory options)
Happy that it's an M0+ core. As most embedded products are based on ARM and many job descriptions ask for familiarity with ARM internals. M0+ is a good starting point as there's no complicated hardware, eg: no hardware FPU, DSP
I'm located in Kerala, India. Ordered through this distributor. The packaging was good, everything was smooth except a minor inconvenience that they didn't mention during time of order COD (Cash On Delivery) isn't available to my shipping address. They mailed me next day to go with pre-paid option. I do recommend them.