Unofficial Boards Back for More Education

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  • I have an Espruino coming tomorrow. In the reference section of this Web site I see "unofficial boards'. From what I can see-what they seem to have in common with the Espruino is they have the ARM MCU along with onboard ADC's & other goodies.

    I bought this Espruino board for the main reason that I thought it would be a lot easier to use Jacascript for programming an MCU board than say, as an example, an Arduino or any of its derivatives, for designing gadjets or what have you.

    My fall down or weakness has always programming-not hardware. IMO-opinion BTW-the Teensy units designed by Paul Stoffgren are the bomb for small MCU boards and in terms of horsepower-run circles around the Arduous-especially the Teensy3.1. But, again, my problem is learning to program & Javascript, as I have already said in another post, looks extremely promising for programming dunces such as myself.

    I think I have finally figured it out. Is it so that what i am in part buying here is the Javascript interpreter which is actually Firmware that is loaded on the Espruino board. It looks like it can also be loaded on the unofficial boards listed under the Reference section. Is that how it works? I absolutely don't mind buying this board, the Firmware(JavaScript interpreter), and the the very nice Chrome Browser IDE. I know Gordon is very famiilar with ARM ST boards. It would very cool to see a Teensy3.1 become an additional "unofficial board!

  • Yeah - when you buy an official Espruino board, you're paying a premium that goes to funding continued development on the Espruino firmware.

    You can put Espruino on the unofficial boards, however, you can't expect the same level of polish, nor the same degree of support from Gordon if there are problems with the firmware on unofficial boards.

    The Teensy uses an ARM MCU, but it uses one from another manufacturer, not ST. That means that all the code to interact with the chip's onboard hardware would have to be rewritten (manufacturers typically make their peripherals behave the same way across their product line, so if you know that timer1 can output PWM, it works the same way as getting timer1 to do pwm on another chip from that manufacturer - but from a different manufacturer, it'll be totally different)

  • Thanks-Dr.Arzzy again for your thoughtful replies. Turns out, we're neighbors. I live in York, ME, just over the border from Portsmouth, NH. I couldn't agree with you more that Gordon is constantly improving his product. That was a very attractive feature to me, and I can see that he is a very thoughtful person.
    I am very drawn to RGB LED lights & the Espruino is a terrific way to proceed. So again; I am excited. I started with PICs, looked at the Basic Stamp, then the Arduino. I have a bad learning disability, which has prevented me from taking programming courses, as I am mildly dyslexic and would fall behind very quickly. I can not figure out what it is about electronics that I find so fascinating. The fact that you can send intelligence through the air invisibly almost at the speed of light, and, yet-in the case of a wave, you need a physical object(antenna) that is a mathematical analog in physical size will always blow my mind ! I am 69 but have never lost that boyish sense of wonder!

  • I think as usual, @DrAzzy's totally summed it up :)

    I provide firmware images for other boards, but they're not tested or documented to anywhere near the same extent as the Espruino board. I also tend to prioritise bugs that affect people who have bought Espruino boards, and I put more effort into cramming software in too. On other boards, if some functionality doesn't fit in then I tend to just leave it out.

    Espruino could be ported to other devices, but as @DrAzzy says it's difficult because the peripherals are accessed in different ways. Unfortunately because my salary is paid from Espruino board sales it's not really in my best interests to port it to new platforms, especially if they may eat into Espruino board sales.

    The ST Nucleo/Discovery boards (which are a lot cheaper) are manufactured in huge quantities and sold basically at cost by ST as a way to encourage people to use their chips. The licence actually forbids their use in any commercial products. It's just not possible for me to compete with them for price, while also being able to support my work.

    It's interesting that you came from Basic Stamp - that was really one of my motivations for Espruino... trying to provide an interpreted language in a micro, but doing it with something a bit more modern.

  • Gordon- I think what you are doing is fabulous, and I really appreciate how much effort you are putting into this terrific product, and am excited about what you have in the pipeline! Your personal effort shows through in the number of projects for the Espruino on the site. And your out of the box thinking is great. Plus-I was really glad to see you not over charging customers with add on "modules" at $25 a pop as I have seen from the Stamp to one of your competitors. Keep up the great work!

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Unofficial Boards Back for More Education

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