TI still don’t get it, what attracts people to arduino is that the programming environment is completely free, not crippleware like both of environments are for this chip

” pushing thier Lunchapad Wiki to help you ”

Anyone at HaD hungry? :)

Anyway, if I can get them here in Europe for that price, I’ll look into it. Seems the devices have gcc-support, so getting them to work on Linux shouldn’t be that much of a hassle.

$4.30???? You’ve gotta be kidding me. That’s INSANE. I’d be crazy NOT to buy of these just to fool around with it at the very least. Good job, TI!

Two please!

Wow, compared to all the other ‘low cost’ boards listed on their website (average price, over $100), this really seems like a new direction for them.

Unfortunately their site’s throwing an error when it comes to check-out, so none for me today.

@mfsamuel I would say it is less to do with intellectual property concepts and more to do with being able to use whatever processor you want in the range, and knowing that if the is a problem, it is a problem with your hardware/software and not some arbitrary code size or feature limits.

@mfsamuel: I think the key word in UltraMagnus’ post was “crippleware”. You’re right that most people don’t care if the software is open source of not. They care about price. The problem is that, while the TI hardware is much cheaper ($4.30 per board vs. ~$30.00 per board) the software for the Arduino is free while the TI software costs a minimum of $445.00 if you don’t want a limited copy.

@Colecoman1982 Quot from TI Website
Free downloadable versions of IAR Kickstart and Code Composer Studio Ver 4 integrated development environments are available and include an assembler, linker, simulator, source-level debugger, and C-compiler. These free IDEs are unrestricted on MSP430 Value Line devices.
So should stay free for the supported MP

Sounds interresting, hope they will be easy to get from europe with to much shipping cost.
It’s always fun to toy with new microcontrollers.
Anybody know if there at any advantages or disadvantages to these compared to PICs or AVRs?

There does exist a GCC port: http://mspgcc4.sourceforge.net/

@Colecoman: The real question is whether the free version of the TI environment does what the users want/need it to do. If it does, then it’s a moot point and we’re back to abstract ideals about who owns what, right?

While the free Code Composer may be code-size limited, the 16K code-gen limit is far more than the storage space on either of the two chips on this board. Both the MSP430G2211 and MSP430G2231 have only 2K of flash and 128 bytes of RAM. This is pretty limiting compared to the standard Arduino with an ATMega328 that has 32K of flash and 2K of RAM.

Oh, and I was just today bitching about the stupid custom pinout on the arduino (vendor lockin for an open hardware project? WHY?) so good on TI for not pulling a similar stunt.

I have used one of the Ti DSP boards, it was very nice. Of course it cost me 400 bucks, still I won’t hesitate to pickup a few of these boards to play with. They got me at 4 dollars.
Low cost eval boards I feel are all due to arduino taking over the low end of the hobby boards. If you want more from arudino its only logical you would try another atmel product. Its the perfect marketing tool to draw nerds to your door.

For anyone having errors while trying to order, I created an account and was able to order board. Trying to order with creating an account gave me errors.

The crippleware is still crippleware because it limits you tu a little size, wether that is larger than the two chips or not.
Are you planing on sticking to <2K flash projects or moving on?

TI store is very slow… guess these are popular

Looks like shipping is free internationally. Brilliant! I’ve been wanting to muck about with a microcontroller for a while now.

> TI store is very slow… guess these are popular

Well, they are now!

Site’s about as slow as the SparkFun giveaway…

Mike Y
Dallas, Texas

Awesome! 4:30$ Nuts! That is so great, finally a platform which can really run on batteries. AVRs (Arduino) do have much worse power characteristics then 430, and 430 is 16 bit. I will definetly order them.

@UltraMagnus, actually on TI’s site they claim:
“These free IDEs are unrestricted on MSP430 Value Line devices.”

I say kudos to TI for jumping into this market. The more competition the better! As a hobbyist developing a battery-powered 802.15 device, I’m intrigued by this chip’s low power consumption. Put me down for 5!

Either TI is just normally an ultra-slow site, or HaD’s coverage of them might have sent them way more traffic than they can handle. Good job throwing this out there guys, I’ll be picking up one or two to play around with.

I really like the price but I don’t think 2K is enough for me to really do anything.

Do you think if the board was cut along the first dotted line (under the jumpers) it could act as a $4 usb to serial???

So can someone state – for us arduino nubs – If you’re comfortable programming an arduino, can you program one of these?

Is 2k memory and 128 bytes of ram enough to do anything cool?

Comparing this to an Arduino isn’t really appropriate. They’re two difference classes of processors, targeted at generally mutually exclusive application spaces. This particular MSP430 family member is for applications requiring a very small foot-print. If you need more resources, then you need to upscale your processor, regardless if you stay in the MSP430 family, or switch to an AVR family.

PIC, Atmel and MSP430 all have processors than span a wide range of resources. These particular ones are more in line with the ATTiny2313 or the PIC16F84′s. The larger MSP430′s like the MSP430F123 is more like the ATMega323.

Make sure your family comparisons are valid before you go claiming one is “better” than the other.

Why does this board have the capabilities for a PDIP 20, I couldn’t even find a MSP430 that 20 pins? And 2K is the largest chip you can get with 14 pins.

If anyone from TI is reading, you could make a long-term investment to eventually create a huge hobbist community around your MSP430 parts if you were to release the full JTAG debug specs. It won’t happen overnight, over time open source tools will develop for your MSP430 parts with amazing capabilities. Long term, ARM (not MSP430) is going to win everyone hearts and minds because of projects like OpenOCD. Today the widely used projects like Arduino don’t make use of such things (Atmel hasn’t release JTAG debug specs either), but these tools mature slowly when there isn’t a single company with competitive pressures and customer relationships. In time, tools like Arduino (likely new projects) will eventually become much more sophisticated. ARM is the only platform worth considering. MSP430 could be, but the lack of documentation, over the long term, is going to limit what 3rd party tools will ever be able to deliver for your products.

Personally I think this is great for TI. First off, they’re cheap boards which is always a bonus, and second off, if there is a gcc port for the chips then all the better. Just because they (TI) provides two IDE’s that are only windows doesn’t mean that those are the IDE’s you must use. But hopefully TI does get some feed back about possible things to change, and as a result change future versions of their chips, or add a new family for use with this board, who knows.
No matter what, the price is great and evidentially the platform is popular for this because I can’t even get to TI’s site to order one for my self.

Oh, great. Another TI product. Sure, go ahead an order it, and wait 6months for delivery. Again. TI doesn’t appologise, TI doesn’t refund, they just keep on lying.

Now that’s how you capture the hobby market.

@Alchemyguy: There’s nothing really abstract about it. Whether it’s TIs system, or Arduinos, your commiting yourself to spend the time and effort to learn the API/tools for that, specific, vendor. When you make a decision about which vendor to choose, you need to look beyond the, specific, project you happen to be working on at the moment and decide whether, or not, the vendor’s solution is best for future project you may work on.

In this case, at the very minimum, is you are comparing these boards to Arduinos (which is the specific, premise of the HAD post) then you, immediately, realize that if you want to program anything even close to the limit of a standard Arduino board (32K of Flash) then it will cost you, at least, the $455 from TI.

This is a poison pill. This is meant to do one thing – get embedded hobbyists hooked on hardware so that when they need more power, they will have to cough up the big bucks for the compiler. If we can get around this with a free compiler, then it’s a win/win, otherwise, this is very much a “first one’s free” sort of thing. Hobbyists who learn on a platform will want to extend their knowledge on the same platform, and that’s what TI is banking on. Don’t think for a moment they’re being altruistic here.

TI’s store is still down, so it must be popular enough.

$4.30 for another tool in my tool bag? Absolutely worth it. There is no one MCU line for everything so having access to another option this cheap is worthwhile for me.

My Arduino is not going anywhere. Having MSPGCC for the MSP430 keeps some options open, but I don’t see myself using this for big projects, however, it has some potential for specific low-power applications. More tools equals more options and that makes you a more versatile engineer or hobbyist or tinkerer.

This is the nth time their servers have gone down. The same happened to the Chronos. Cmon TI.

That sound you just heard was my brain exploding.

This is definitely a loss-leader move for TI.

I will order one as soon as I am able to, but its an awefully tiny chip memory wise, which is going to limit its application in my shop

for the price though you cant help but want to tinker with it, and its always good to learn new things

Dunno why people are complaining about it’s 2k flash…that’s easily be enough to blink a LED.

Well, at least Mouser has them available for future purchase at $5.07. Still not opening the order page here. I wanna grab that watch while I’m at it.

Wow! Reading the emphasis on price in the post, I expected something like $15 to $20. $4.30!! That’s crazy! TI’s got my attention, will try it out.

I FINALLY got through. 3 on backorder it looks like (been trying to order since 10am)
Well, I’ve been looking for a way to start with these chips for a while now (I’ve dabbled with the goodfet programmers which are, don’t get me wrong, great (and a good learning platform for SMD soldering)… but it’s difficult to hook up a ‘raw’ chip and start flashing it.

As for FOSS alternatives to the TI offerings, you can look at my page I wrote on getting MSPGCC up and running under linux (it’s a PITA).

http://osf1.gmu.edu/~abovill/mspgcc.html

I think their server is running on these little processors. Been trying to order for the last couple of hours with no luck!

@jc

Uninformed option on the internet? Someone document this quick, it has to be a first!

In order to keep this post relevant, I was able to place my order around 14:30 EST.

So, after several hours of trying on the website, I eventually called in and ordered 2 kits. When calling in, you apparently get charged $25 shipping, which will be removed afterwards, but the credit card authorization was for $33.60 for me.

I also put a pending order on Mouser for 2, but I will probably end up canceling that one.

The guy at TI told me that they have about 200 units on backorder at this time, I am not sure if that was just from phone sales or total.

Being new to Micro controllers, I balk at the arduino’s price tag, this is less than I spend a day on Dr Pepper.

About 45 minutes after I got the confirmation email i was able to check the order status on their website. Unsurprisingly, they’re backordered.

Its crazy stupid prices, I paid more than that for my lunch today, so in retrospect, the dump I am about to take cost the same as 2 of these.

Who gives a shit, hack away…I’m getting 2 seeing as they ship everywhere.

Mouser has already 10.000 pcs on backorder! This is totally crazy. Plus the ones they sold from the TI store (which by now is completely sold out), must be more units than Arduino has been sold yet at all. I ordered three for 4.20€ from Mouser, free shipping. One will be a present for my boss :-) He’ll like it.

reminds me completely of when ST released the STM8S-Discovery: http://hackaday.com/2009/11/23/stm8s-discovery-microcontrollers-reach-a-new-low/

Similar arguments on that side as well… whereas I am already up and running with AVRs, I am still tempted to pick up a few of these just for the heck of it. but then I can’t help but remember that I still have 3 of the STM8S’s, packed away, and cant help but assume this TI device would have the same fate.

Mouser (the vendor TI points to from the wiki) is currently showing 9,848 have been pre-ordered and the first 398 will ship July 5th. I’m guessing an order now will take a while to ship.

I can’t order from Mouser with free shipping. Maybe it depends on the destination ? The cheapest delivery starts from 40 Euro

I wanted to order one… TI store gave an error about processing, now redirects to mouser which asks 40 euros for shipping.
NO thanks…

The shame of it is, that QFP64 chip on the board is probably an MCU, and far more capable than the pitiful thing with 2K they actually break out for you to play with.