"Kiwkstik" Cortex M4 Dev Board for 13.50GBP - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: harnon
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 04, 2012, 06:20:20 pm
content: Hi guys,I'm thinking of learning ARM micros because they look suitable for some higher speed applications I'm working on. I've found the LCPXpresso products which look quite good (I think I saw an LCP1114 or something "coming soon" for around 12GBP but there are others for around 20).I noticed that Farnell have a "Kwikstik" based on a 100Mhz Freescale Cortex M4. Have any of you guys had any experience with these?http://uk.farnell.com/jsp/search/productdetail.jsp?sku=1892378. Its got quite a few built in components (microphone, lcd, battery, audio jack, programmer, etc).The schematic is online:http://cache.freescale.com/files/32bit/hardware_tools/schematics/KWIKSTIK-K40-SCH.pdf?fpsp=1I'm trying to work out what the catch isThanks,Will

author: T4P
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 04, 2012, 07:18:26 pm
content: STM32F4-Discovery ? Why not ?OR :http://www.aliexpress.com/product-fm/425312334-Free-shipping-STM32-HY-MINI-STM32V-Development-Board-STM32F103VCT6-With-3-2-LCD-wholesalers.html

author: harnon
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 04, 2012, 09:11:16 pm
content: Not bad, although almost twice the price (justifiable given the LCD). "China Express" postage doesn't fill me with a great deal of confidence - based on past ebay experiences this could take anywhere from 1 week to six.I ordered the Farnell one... can't go too far wrong I hope!

author: T4P
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 04, 2012, 10:16:03 pm
content: Quote from: harnon on March 04, 2012, 09:11:16 pmI ... Trusted them , 1 week isn't a problem you know .I don't mind waiting .

author: juanfermed
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 11, 2012, 01:52:39 am
content: Hi, I can tell you that Kwikstik board is really good. I just got one last year, and although I havent had time to tinker with it, I saw some friend making really good stuff with it. I am really a newbie in electronics and microcontrollers, I must find time to learn with the kwikstik, but I have found there are some very interesting resources that maybe you would like to take a look at:-Codewarrior 10.2 Is the lastest version of Freescale's debugger/compiler for must of all its MCUs. It is Eclipse based and, I havent had much time working on it but it has a lot of useful features. You can download the special edition which is free, and limited to 128kb for the K40 I think, and start coding.http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=CW-MCU10] http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=CW-MCU10-Also if you go to Freescales webpagewww.freescale.comand type in the search box the word "kwikstik" you will find tons of useful resources, from labs, to datasheets and app notes, also some webinars. Probably they will be useful to you.- Also here are some videotutorials in you on how to program the kwikstik, and its various peripherals, I am sure you will want to watch this videos, they are so good, I wish I had the time to go through them and learn all that :https://www.youtube.com/user/emh203?feature=watch] https://www.youtube.com/user/emh203?feature=watch-And this page is also very very useful when learning with the Kinetis K40, I took me you dont know how much frustration and time to get to these resources, If you want to learn about it I am sure you will want to look at this, they are very interesting:http://thefreescalecup.wikidot.com/That FreeScale Cup is a competition Freescale makes in Universities and between universities in which students are given a "SmartCar" (thats how Freescale calls it) and they design a line following car with cameras and a lot of stuff. The webpage above is a very useful resource for those students, and I am sure that if you go through it you will be on your way to learn about ARM architectura and the K40.-Also there is this page :http://brtosblog.wordpress.com/where a group of brazilians developed and RTOS for many architectures, and I had the chance to test it with the kwikstik because they have a release special for it, and it was so easy to load the RTOS to the kwikstik, that was the only interesting thing I could do with it, I didnt did anything more that download the RTOS from their page, downloaded it to the Kwikstik and see what I does. That RTOS is called BRTOS because of Brazilian RTOS.That is what I can give to you. If you get into knowing this MCU, the architecture, how it works, how to program it and anything else, I really encourage you to share your knowledge with the community, via tutorials, programs, or anything else. You can really spend a lot lot lot of time only searching for some basic information about how to learn when you are a newbie like me, so I hope I might help you out a little, and save some frustration and time wondering how to start. I am sure if you look the places I told you, you will get to learn something. Probably in the future I will have some time to learn this too, right now I have only got prepared the resources to start hahaha

author: harnon
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 11, 2012, 04:58:04 pm
content: Hi juanfermed,Thanks for the post and all the links! I had a bit of a play with the Kwikstik and it seems quite nice. The only issue being the software that comes with it is a pain to get running in Win7, and requires about 10 things installed.Also, its a bit of a pin to get to the micro pins for connecting other things, so its not particularly useful for the application I originally had in mind. On the other hand, it does have a lot of features on a small board for a very low price so I'm sure I'll find something useful to do with it at some point!Will

author: juanfermed
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 13, 2012, 02:46:38 pm
content: Yeah, thats true, it needs a patch fot MQX and another for codewarrior and another patch for the kwikstik, its a pain in the ass... the thing about the pins is true also, some of them are connected to test points, so some are easily accesible (if soldering a wire to the test point is easy), it is not like it has a header with connections to all pins. But as you say, it has a lot of stuff on it, so playing with it is nice. You may also want to see the two headers that are on the back side of the the board, once I saw that there are "plug-in" modules for this board, probably they are connected directly to the mcu pins, so you might be able to access to pins from there, the only thing is to get a female-header to plug in it...

author: harnon
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 13, 2012, 06:16:01 pm
content: Yeah, I just double checked the schematic (linked above) and it looks like most of those are tied to ground, although some have pin connections. Same with the "PCI-x" connectors used for connecting into their tower thingamajig. Could be useful with a bit more investigation.