BUYERS GUIDE

Latest MCU Development Boards

Make Prototyping Easier

Abhishek A. Mutha
is a senior technical
correspondent at EFY

mbedded design prototyping has

never been so easy before, exclaims
Darshan Virupaksha, systems engineer, Altiux Innovations, and co-organiser,
IoTBLR. He says, Makers and do-it-yourself
(DIY) enthusiasts have a plethora of options
to suit their needs. Today, the ecosystem offers
easy access to development boards and the
most important feature is software support.
The prototyping scenario has indeed seen
an escalation and one of the biggest factors
is the range of microcontroller (MCU) development boards out there in market. From
low-cost, entry-level boards to powerful,
application-specific ones, we try to help you
buy the right board by focusing on different
categories, new features, general selection
criteria and boards that have been in the
spotlight.

General, application- and

industrial-specific boards
Some MCU
development boards

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Quite a few development boards in the market today are general MCU-specific, such as

August 2015 | Electronics For You

STM32 discovery kits, MSP430 from Texas

Instruments (TI) or Xplained boards from
Atmel, and these are available from semiconductor manufacturers themselves, informs T.
Anand, managing director, Knewron.
Local companies design some of the economically available boards. Anand says, In
both cases, MCU development boards come
in two flavours; one is the MCU evaluation
board, where the focus is on evaluating
MCU capabilities.
Second category is application- or
feature-specific, where the board is designed
for the purpose of evaluating certain features of the MCU and is usually focussed on
some application area, he adds.
Broadly, there are three different categories that todays MCU boards fall under.
Generic multi-purpose boards. Today,
every MCU manufacturer like Microchip,
NXP, Cypress, TI and Atmel provides an
evaluation kit compatible with their MCUs.
Kanishka Shah, co-founder of Entesla, says,
International third-party development board

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BUYERS GUIDE
manufacturers like Arduino, Sparkfun,
Adafruit, Seeedstudio and Mikroelectronika are popular among students,
hobbyists and professionals for the
quick prototyping tools they offer.
Shah adds, Development boards
for MCUs based on AVR, PIC, 8051
and ARM7 architectures are very
popular among students and beginners as these are easily available in
the local market. These come with a
varying set of onboard peripherals to
suit a wide range of applications for
every budget.
These can be used for rapid prototyping and smaller proof-of-concept
(POC) development. Boards such as
Arduino, MangoPi, chipKIT, mbed,
MSP430 Launchpads and STM32 discovery kits, to name a few, fall under
this category, notes Syed Anwaarullah, founder, PotentialLabs.
He adds, MCU development platforms such as Arduino come with a
host of free and open source libraries
that help in building rapid prototypes
very easily with the help of add-on
shields and expansion boards.
Application-specific development
boards. Anwaarullah informs that,
such boards are for dedicated tasks
mostly used by companies or engineers building specific products in
areas such as home/industrial automation, automotive applications and
more. He says, These development
kits allow to rapidly test the functionality of the MCU as per requirements
before moving on to fabricating custom printed circuit boards (PCBs).
Such boards are usually costly in
comparison to generic development
boards, but offer more features and
a dedicated development tool chain.
Platforms like Raspberry Pi (or
Raspi), BeagleBone and mbed have
very high processing power running
into GHz and random access memory
(RAM) that expends in GBs, remarks
Neha Mehta, founder, Hacktronics
India. She says, These boards run
custom Linux variants and encapsulate all complexities of the external
hardware into friendly programming
languages like Python, for instance.
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Why is Arduino a hot favourite in entry-level MCU boards

Popularity of an MCU development kit is primarily driven by the ease of the development
environment. Arduino revolution has shown the way it has to be and has inspired many to
take up embedded prototyping.
Darshan Virupaksha, systems engineer, Altiux Innovations,
and co-organiser, IoTBLR
It is because of the ease of programming Arduino that gets even non-programmers
such as design students and hobbyists to tinker with MCUs without knowing advanced
MCU C/C++ or assembly languages.
Syed Anwaarullah, founder, PotentialLabs
Arduino and its variants are perfect for beginning with programming embedded
electronics. Used mostly by students and in open source projects, these are available
with almost every major retailer in India. Benefits of these boards are cost, availability and
libraries support. Almost all major sensors have libraries written for Arduino.
Neha Mehta, founder, Hacktronics India

Industry-ready development
boards. Advanced processing power
boards based on ARM7 or ARM9
architecture are used for industrial
applications. These include Cubietruck boards and dual-core or quadcore processors-powered Allwinner
boards, which are mostly used for
media processing in applications like
smart televisions, media centres and
digital video recorders (DVRs).
Such boards can be used directly
in real-time applications. Anwaarullah says, For instance, Arduino Micro or Pro Mini are compact enough
to be embedded inside products
directly and can also be programmed
on-the-go as requirements change.

Features in the spotlight

Different MCUs have varying features
and the entire development board
is usually based on the supported
features of the MCU. Thushar V.P.,
technical director, Rhydo Technologies (P) Ltd, says, Nowadays, many
development boards such as Raspi or
BeagleBone support an onboard operating system (OS). Though a great
feature, these boards tend to be more
expensive than the ones without an
onboard OS.
Primarily, one does look at MCU
boards for their processing and
memory capabilities, but nowadays
most of these offer decent RAM and
flash capabilities, remarks Virupaksha. He says, This makes interface
[like serial peripheral interface (SPI)
and Inter-IC (I2C)] and out-of-box

support offered more valuable. He

adds, Many chips now also support
a universal serial bus (USB) natively
and sometimes USB host as well.
Features such as availability of
embedded wireless modules, dedicated functionality such as encryption and data logging, over-the-air
(OTA) programming and mobile/
cloud synchronisation are some new
features to look out for, observes
Anwaarullah.
ARM, with its mbed initiative,
has helped programmers to have a
variety of mbed-enabled boards using MCU chips from most of the ARM
licencees like NXP, STMicroelectronics and Freescale, among others,
notes Virupaksha. A rich variety
of features in terms of input/output
(I/O) peripherals, low-power modes
and hardware accelerator for digital
signal processing (DSP) plus securitycoupled software support make the
development process a joyful ride
with the latest development boards.
Another addition to this exciting lot is Java-/Java script-enabled
boards. Virupaksha adds, Knowledge of Embedded C is no more a
limitation. Traditional Java programmers can now code on MCUs. Java
source code is translated to C source
code, which is compiled and programmed to the target device. Other
higher level languages like .net are
supported too.
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BUYERS GUIDE
General criteria to consider before buying an MCU board for prototyping
Serviceability. It is important for the boards to be repairable
when something goes wrong. Packaging of the MCU needs to be
considered too. It is important to examine if the MCU is a throughhole part-mounted in a socket or a surface-mounted one. If it is
surface-mounted, it is important to know if it can be replaced when
the need arises.
Pedagogy. The educational value and cognitive loading effects
of the board must be taken into account. Big and fancy development
boards may offer tremendous number of features and look really
cool, but if these features impact a users understanding of the core
technology, then these may be detrimental to the cause.
Reliability. One of the main goals of a development board is
to ensure an operational development board for each and every
experiment. Any time spent attempting to fix the development board
can take away a lot of critical and important time.
Programming support/options. Newer MCUs allow in-circuit
programming while these are located in the system. Options
may include an external programmer or through a self-program
mechanism. Short-term and long-term consideration should be taken
in account. If the development board is utilised for other activities,
these should be considered when deciding how the board will be
programmed.
Processor support (single or multiple). If one is working on
multiple controller families or different part numbers, this factor
becomes critical, as having a separate development board for each
controller may not be feasible all the time. A proper decision can
save money in the short term as well as help in efficiently developing
products or projects in the long run.
Operating voltage. Many controllers these days support multivoltage operation and circuits could have multiple sections operating
at different voltages such as 1.8V, 3.3V, 5V, 12V or so on. Therefore
development tools must support multi-voltages along with level
converters, wherever needed.
Cost. It is an important factor. Irrespective of the value an MCU
board provides to the user, the cost should be at par.
Design control. There is nothing more frustrating than selecting
an appropriate development board only to have the manufacturer
make a change that ultimately forces a new development board to
be selected. It is therefore necessary to have some type of design
control over the development board that is ultimately chosen.
Power supply. Users would not want to buy another power
supply just to suit a certain type of development board. There

tion ports with onboard transceivers

are popular among users. Many
users also look for onboard sensors,
which may be as simple as the ones
for sensing the X-Y-Z coordinate and
as complicated as the ones that perform medical applications like pulse
oximetry, notes Nishant Bhaskar,
embedded processing application
engineer, Texas Instruments India.
He adds, In case of power electronics based systems, customers not
only look for the extent to which the
power stage has been designed but
also the configurability on offer, if
users want to tweak it.
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August 2015 | Electronics For You

are a multitude of options for supplying power to a development

board including benchtop supplies, wall warts, batteries or via USB
connections. As long as the development board provides some kind
of support on power supply management (whether the board has
a rectifier, switched mode power supply (SMPS) or whole power
supply on the board), its value is retained.
Debugging capabilities. Depending upon the kind of work to
be done on a development board, Joint Test Action Group (JTAG),
single-wire debug or any other functionality is necessary so as to
enable users do easy debugging and faster development.
System clock options. This gives the board multiple clock
options such as an internal resistor-capacitor (RC) oscillator and/or
an external crystal to be installed, which can make or break some
of the developments. This is not very critical when compared to all
other factors, though.
Serial port/USB connectivity. For many years, RS232 serial
port connections between development boards and computers
have been a norm. However, laptops with RS232 ports are almost
impossible to find nowadays. Recent trends have led to USB serial
ports as the primary connection between boards. These may be with
native USB support or in the form of serial-to-USB converters. Either
way, this option is critical to development.
Additionally, one may want more than one communication port
(COM). One of the ports can be used in project development, while
the other can be used for debugging and other purposes. Therefore
dual- or multiple-connectivity options are ideal to have.
Form factor. While development boards are ultimately used
for development purposes, their form factor is critical. A board,
which is much bigger in size and difficult to move around may
not be preferred, while a small-sized handy board, which can be
taken anywhere in a pocket or a small box could help engineers
develop things any time.
Readiness for final integration. Buyers also need to look for
embeddable boards, such that if they finalise a solution and time-tomarket is short, development boards could be directly integrated into
the solution. In many cases, development boards become a perfect
fit for the final product. In such cases, designing another board may
not be warranted (except when parameters like outline of board,
form factor, etc are different). This becomes a very important factor
since it has high potential to save not only time but also redesign
and manufacturing costs.
Courtesy: T. Anand, managing director, Knewron

Another very important feature

in present-day development boards
from companies like STMicroelectronics and TI is onboard debugging,
informs Virupaksha. He says, Apart
from beginners, most users require
this feature. In fact, it is a boon for
developers, as they need not invest
in a debugger, which costs approximately ` 8000.
Even with all these new features,
Thushar feels, basic I/O pins, universal synchronous asynchronous
receiver transmitters (USARTs), serial peripheral interface (SPI), I2C,
two-wire interface (TWO), timers,

compare/capture/pulse width modulation (CCP), analogue-to-digital converters (ADCs) and digital-to-analogue

converters (DACs) constitute basic
features of an MCU, which should
always be accounted for as far as a
development board is concerned.
With increased focus on smartphone based connected applications,
consumers also prefer to work with
wireless MCU kits [specifically in the
Wi-Fi/Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE)/
Bluetooth domain], which have some
kind of Android or iOS app to interact
with, informs Bhaskar. He says, Some
customers also prefer to have access to
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the source files of these graphical user
interfaces (GUIs)/apps as reference for
their own development.

For developing IoT applications

The rapid growth of Internet of Things
(IoT) applications requires devices to
be connected to the Web. Niraj Jha,
CEO and MD, Fab.to.Lab, says, Most
people would like to have an Ethernet
port or a Wi-Fi module built into the
board. The biggest feature to consider for developing IoT-related products
is inbuilt connectivity.
Mehta says, It is important to
consider the kind of connectivity
options supported by the MCU like
BLE4.0, 2.4GHz wireless technology
and others.
Another important feature is the
ease of programming while using the
board. Programming becomes much
easier if the board can run Linux or
Android. For smaller processors, I
would choose a processor architecture
that is well-supported and has tons
of documentation available online,
states Mehta.
She adds, Companies like STMicroelectronics and TI provide
their own software development kits
(SDKs), which wrap all internal hardware-level details for that particular
MCU and make it easier to upgrade to
a newer processor based on the same
architecture.
Additional onboard features like
flash-to-store program, lithium battery
charger and SD card support are good
to have.
Last, power consumption and different sleep modes are essential. It is
important to consider environmental
factors such as adaptability of the
board in remote locations running on
solar power, or if it can survive on a
small battery during unavailability of
power for long durations.
Since the IoT is the talk of the
town, Jha feels, some users might also
want specific features like a display,
motor/servo control for Internetconnected robotics applications or
sometimes a combination of a relay
built into an IoT-ready board for home
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Pricing trends
Entry-level boards with prices starting from ` 800 are usually packaged with a limited
set of onboard peripherals featuring 8-bit MCUs. Intermediate development boards range
from ` 1500 to ` 5000 comprising 8-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit MCUs. There are full-featured
development kits available for ` 5000 onwards featuring popular MCUs with a plethora of
onboard peripherals and the ability to expand to new technologies using add-on modules.
Kanishka Shah, co-founder, Entesla
As pricing can range from a few hundreds to over ` 20,000, it is always good to do a
thorough research before investing money in any of these development boards as you could
stumble upon boards with similar specifications with a much lower price tag. However, some
of these boards might be Chinese-made, which might compromise on quality and reliability.
So, it is always a tough bargain between pricing, features and reliability.
Thushar V.P., technical director, Rhydo Technologies Pvt Ltd
Owing to the great demand for development boards and the increasing interest among
the developer community, boards have seen a steep price decline over the past few years.
Many sub-standard and cheap clones of these boards have also surfaced, which I would
never recommend as these are usually unstable and fail over time.
Syed Anwaarullah, founder, PotentialLabs
Indian buyers are price-conscious and thus pricing seems to be at par for many boards
available in the market. However, the trend is changing fast. Highly capable boards are being
priced on value based outcomes rather than just bill of materials (BOM) costs and many
buyers are appreciative of that.
T. Anand, managing director, Knewron
Pricing is a matter of concern for most developers today. Most mbed development
boards cost ` 3000 or more and a majority of these need to be imported. Hopefully, prices
will reduce in the future. Cheaper open source hardware is on the cards from many hardware
communities. In fact, we at IoTBLR are exploring options on collaborative efforts towards
designing some low-cost, open source MCU development kits for the Indian community.
The variants will support mbed and Arduino integrated development environments (IDEs).
Darshan Virupaksha, systems engineer, Altiux Innovations,
and co-organiser, IoTBLR
Pricing today starts from as low as the US$ 9 full-featured, ultra-powerful, cloud-ready
OAK boards to Java-ready, wirelessly-programmable US$ 70 Tessel boards.
Niraj Jha, CEO and MD, Fab.to.Lab
TI development kits may be priced anywhere from as low as US$ 9 to as high as US$
1000. Price point is something that is dictated solely by the kind of features the users are
looking for in their development kits. In general, evaluation kits as launchpads tend to be of
lower cost than full-blown development kits.
Nishant Bhaskar, embedded processing application engineer, Texas Instruments India

automation applications. He says,

Boards specifically made for home
automation sometimes have other
niche features like mesh networking
built in. Other IoT boards may have
features like secured cloud connectivity built-in into its software as well.

New technologies, prospects

ARM Cortex-M architecture based
MCUs seem to be the future, feels
Virupaksha. He says, Getting used
to ARM MCU architecture will be an
added advantage for any career prospect. He adds, Also, mbed today
has revolutionised the development
environment by making it an online
compiler. You just need a computer
and an mbed board to get started.

As such no new revolutionary

technology has emerged in the last
few years, but according to Moores
Law, the speed is always increasing,
notes Mehta. She says, Intel has
launched many new development
boards like Galileo and Edison, which
take the leverage of Intels powerful
and trusted platform.
Mehta adds, Most technologies
used are old like Wi-Fi but are packaged into newer processors and at
highly reduced costs like the ESP8266
chip, which can act as a Wi-Fi solution with an integrated MCU. Older
chips like AR9331 are packaged as
easy-to-use modules like Onion
Omega and Domino Pi boards, which
cost around US$ 10, have integrated
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Wi-Fi stacks and can Major Contributors to this Story
run embedded Linux.
With an increasing
requirement for ultra
low power and data
reliability, Bhaskar
feels, ferroelectric ranDarshan
Kanishka Shah, Neha Mehta,
Niraj Jha,
Nishant Bhaskar,
Syed
T. Anand,
Thushar V.P.,
Virupaksha,
co-founder,
founder,
CEO and MD, embedded processing Anwaarullah, managing director, technical director,
dom access memory systems
engineer,
Entesla
Hacktronics
Fab.to.Lab
application engineer,
founder,
Knewron
Rhydo
India
Texas Instruments
PotentialLabs
Technologies
(FRAM) is slowly be- Altiux Innovations,
and co-organiser,
India
Pvt Ltd
ing seen as a viable
IoTBLR
replacement for flash.
MediaTek LinkIt ONE development Bhaskar says, CC3200 has been an
FRAM offers a huge number of read/
write cycles, with lesser read/write platform is one among the best, feels award-winning chipset, receiving
times and much lower power con- Virupaksha. He says, It enables you several accolades in 2014 such as
sumption as opposed to flash. He to design and prototype wearables Electronics Products Product of the
says, These kinds of devices are use- and IoT devices, using hardware and Year, Zinnov Innovation Award and
ful in particular for applications that application programming interfaces Electronic Design Best Communicahave very stringent requirements on (API) that are similar to those offered tion Product of the Year.
Arduino Zero definitely provides
for Arduino boards. He adds, It is a
power consumption.
power pack in terms of its features as a huge boost to the community and
He adds, TI also features a
whole host of development kits, both it offers Bluetooth, GSM and GPS on a provides a powerful MCU with Arduigeneral-purpose as well as applica- single platform and, most importantly, no IDE support, which makes it merrier to implement some complex protion-specific, based on our FRAM in a very small form factor.
Raspi recently sold two million jects, informs Virupaksha. He says,
MCUs for users to evaluate.
Developers should also look for boards and is a very good board for Many crowd-funded boards using
development boards integrated with learning basic computer programming Nordic Semiconductors nRF51822
have helped many BLE developers to
onboard features for different wireless and interfacing with hardware. Mehta
technologies like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, says, Apart from Raspi, we are seeing demonstrate use cases with mobile
Global System for Mobile communi- high traction for Wi-Fi boards with phones and other IoT applications.
Keeping in mind the requirements
cation (GSM), General Packet Radio ESP8266 or AR9331 chipsets.
mbed has been making quite of building scalable IoT applications,
Service (GRPS), ZigBee and near field
communication (NFC) with a low- some noise with its Cortex M0 and Anwaarullah says, Our team has
power MCU and display, opines Shah. Cortex M3 based NXP MCU develop- built an Arduino-compatible Wi-Fi
He says, The ability to interface ment boards supporting cloud based IoT development board called Refdifferent low-power technology sen- firmware development, says Shah. flion for building end-to-end IoT
sors like accelerometers, gyroscopes, He adds, Launchpad series by TI solutions through cloud gateway and
global positioning systems (GPSes), is quite popular among developers mobile applications. Made in India,
temperature and humidity sensors us- working on low-power battery-oper- Refflion can also be used by educational organisations and universities
ing add-ons should be made available ated devices based on MSP430.
BLE sensor tag based on CC2541 to introduce students to build cononboard in future.
has garnered a lot of attention ever nected robotics, wearables and other
Boards in the spotlight and
since it was released. It has won EE IoT solutions. He says, Refflion will
some upcoming ones
Times/EDN Ace award for the best soon be launched internationally on
A new US$ 9 board called Chip has development kit and was also an- crowd funding, and backers would be
recently received more than US$ 2 nounced as the first Bluetooth Smart able to get the board and shields at a
million in online crowd-funding, in- accessory to support Android (July special price.
Knewrons Quickly is an IoT-ready
forms Anwaarullah. He says, This 2013). Bhaskar says, This design
is a power-packed board that comes kit, while being extremely low-cost development board, which has all the
with onboard Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and (about US$ 25), has been extremely essentials required to develop IoTan ARM processor. At such a low popular with users over the years for related products. Anand says, Alpha
version of the board is already availprice, building powerful connected IoT based solution development.
Similarly, CC3200 Launchpad has able for sampling, and beta version
devices and scalable solutions bebeen of great interest among users is coming out in July. This was also
comes a lot easier. This board,
which starts shipping by 2016, will looking to add Wi-Fi based connec- featured in EFY Expo 2015 held at
tivity to their embedded applications. New Delhi.
create endless possibilities.
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