The Wiki has changed the link to point to Mouser, and now you have to pay shipping (only 77 cents in the US, but a massive $21.18 shipping to Canada). So much for free shipping to us Canadians.

WOW! I was considering buying an Arduino for a while, but I couldn’t justify spending that kind of money for one when I currently don’t have the slightest idea of what I would do with it. But for $5? Hell, I’ll buy two.

I put in an order for a few, then upon receiving my confirmation email canceled due to them actually costing Canadians $25.

FYI CCSv4 has a cap at 16k. And this device supports SpyBiWire, so you are not limited to only the value line (which by the way are under 50 cents a piece!) for example the MSP430F2254 has 16k and can be programmed with SpyBiWire. You can also do in circuit programming by plugging into the dip socket. I use the msp430 alot, and I find it easier/better than arduino because I know the code (meaning the actual ASM code) I am running and CCS has a good debugger too. I am not for using some arbitrary library that someone else coded, that results in bloated code, that teaches arduino users that 2k or 4k isnt enough. I think this launchpad is an excellent idea and solves the problem with the eZ430 of not being able to program other chips than the daughter cards TI supplies. If you take a look inside your Fluke DMMs, you will find an MSP430.

I guess they should have had a limit, 2-5 for regular people, and 30-40 for schools etc.

Well, I wanted one, too bad I guess.

Why Doesn’t Atmel do this? I mean $10-15 Arduino’s instead of what they cost now.

I went ahead and bought enough stuff for 5 Atmega boards for around $50, but it was tough and I had to shop separately for everything (eBay, Fry’s, Rat Shack)

Atmel doesn’t make the Arduino, it’s a whole separate company.

some typos:

Second paragraph, last line.
“TI is also looking for community involvement, pushing thier [sic] Lunchapad [sic] Wiki to help you get stated [sic] and asking that you add you [sic] knowledge as you find success with the 16-bit platform.”

should be…
“TI is also looking for community involvement, pushing th[ei]r L[aunch]pad Wiki to help you get sta[r]ted and asking that you add you[r] knowledge as you find success with the 16-bit platform.”

Other than that, it’s a great article, well put together. The suspense was killing me.

As Brennan said, “…[one would] be crazy NOT to buy of these just to fool around with it at the very least.”

I ordered two. The platform was recommended to me by a retired contractor who works with electronics and microcontrollers.

All the bad things people say can’t keep me away. It is one more platform to gain experience on. It is small and I believe the chips are relatively cheap.

I can afford to risk $8.60 and I think it is well worth it when everyone else is nickle and diming me at my expense.

Thank you, TI! Thank you, Hackaday!

I think I pass.

We don’t use credit cards much in The Netherlands so we get to pay a nice 19.00 Euro’s wire transfer fee (via Mouser). And ?free? shipping is not so very free at 20 euro’s, of course there’s VAT to pay 4.59.

Price for this package comes to: EUR 47.77.
( http://bit.ly/d6BjSI )

Order is canceled!!!!!!

I stick to my Arduino’s and PICS! A lot cheaper.

@ Stephen,

I know Atmel isn’t Arduino. The question I asked was “Why Doesn’t Atmel offer a cheap arduino?”

Same question, why not?

@al

I assume it’s due to currency conversion. It was ~5.38 CAD for me.

Site seems to be back up, I got through quickly. Just have to hope that they have some left in stock…

From TI’s website:

Easy-to-use – LaunchPad includes all of the hardware and software needed to get started. Open source projects and code examples help users get up and running quickly.

“Open source projects”. No one has mentioned this up to this point. Either it has just been added, or everyone posting is a little cautious when they read *open source* written by the ad guys.

I’ll probably order a couple myself Friday (when I get paid), but someone earlier said something about a 28-week lead time. That comes out to the first week or so of next January. By the time I order, it might be next summer.

No matter how many they SELL, it will be the number they get INTO hacker’s & hobbist’s hands that will determine how much market share they can ultimately grab.

Free shipping my arse… nearly $40 AUD for a small board like that? Yeah right. I thought eBayers were bad at overcharging shipping.

Just to reiterate, it was only free shipping through the TI estore, not through mouser. Nothing was ever said about Mouser giving free shipping (although I do realize a banner leading to Mouser says free shipping).

BTW, the Wiki page now says:

“Ship Date

July 5″

Doesn’t sound like 28 weeks to me :).

F.Y.I. I finally got my order placed today (no chance yesterday).
The Page doesnt have the direct link anymore but if you go to http://www.ti-estore.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=MSP-EXP430G2 you can still order in the ti store ;-)

Is it possible to do a software usb on this? I want to use one for Genesis Controller -> USB.

All the hardware msp430′s are not DIP controllers.

Does flash programming work when the IDE runs in WINE?

For those of you kvetching about crippleware – like most TI bundles this should be coming with the ‘bundle license’ version of CCSv4 — NOT the EVAL or code size limited versions.

That means the only thing likely “crippled” on it is going to be it’s going to be target limited to the MSP 430 – which means for working with Launchpad it’s not crippled AT ALL.

I would also point out that the two included microcontrollers only have 2k of flash and 128 bytes of RAM, meaning the 4k limit on IAR Workbench is also a TOTAL NON ISSUE!!! That would also then apply to the code limited version of CCS as well – since it’s damned unlikely you’d ever need the 16k maximum compile size limit with ANY of the 430′s in the value line that even fit the board since not one of them comes with more than 2k of flash!

Maybe they have actually learned something from their debacle with the TI990, which came out about the same time as the TRS80.

For those of you too young to remember, this is how that played out:

Radio Shack tried half-heartedly, but utterly failed, to make their system a closed one. Their TRS-80 was hacked almost as soon as it hit the shelves. Just about everybody you could imagine was selling plug-in hardware, and software, for the TRS-80.

There were more TRS-80s sold than all other computers, of any type, combined, up to that time. That record stood until over a year after IBM introduced their 8088-based PC. Radio Shack had a 10% or 15% share of what became a multi-billion-dollar market.

The TI900 was the first commercially available 16-bit PC, and had substantially more processing power and address space than the TRS-80. TI succeeded completely in making their system completely closed, with the only way to develop software for the TI990 being a $10,000 developer’s kit with a really onerous licensing agreement.

TI sold a few dozen TI990s. I don’t know for sure how many of the development systems they sold, but I could probably count them on my fingers. Of one hand. TI managed to get a 100% share of almost no market at all.

dude…i just ordered 2. first project – a device that monitors pulse rate and varies the speed of a vibrator accordingly.

Lithuania and other Baltic countries, which are EU members, are also not in the list.

Free worldwide shipping FAIL.

sorry, i need to correct myself, the invoice had the whole amount on it. so no free shipping from mouser.

ordered 4 of them. $4.64 CDN each from mouser with free shipping
“Shipping Method: FedEx International Priority”

Obviously they are running their entire eCommerce site on one (1) of these prototype boards. Slow as s#!t.

Tried ordering from Mouser and they contacted me saying that shipping is not free for this item.

>dude…i just ordered 2. first project – a device that monitors pulse rate and varies the speed of a vibrator accordingly.

FUCKING YES!

@alex
Mouser shipping isn’t free to canada, $20 fedex. So basically you get a PCB USB cable and a dollar worth of uC for $25

As one other user noted, the whole spacing thing on the Arduino board was a “last minute rush job” mistake (literally an “11th hour” thing); do some research on the Arduino website and you can find mellis or one of the other mods (can’t remember who) noting that they were rushing late at night to get the PCBs designed (back for the ATMega8), and he misaligned the header, and they didn’t know it until waaay too late. Even so, it obviously didn’t stop anyone (and probably made more than a few people learn EagleCAD/GEDA).

The ATMega328 (not sure if the 168 is still made or not) is cheap in “standalone” mode; a few dollars at most. You don’t need the Arduino board (which several companies and individuals make variants of – Atmel only supplies the chips) to program one; just bring out the ICSP header and use a programmer – or if you have the bootloader on-board, bring out a header for an FTDI breakout or cable (there’s even an “el-cheapo” option using a Nokia cellphone cable).

You don’t even need to use a crystal or resonator if you want; the thing works with power and ground, no problem (you’re limited to the internal clock, which runs IIRC at 8 MHz?, and you would need to change the bootloader and such to program it, unless you used ICSP).

I can’t see using the ATMega line of processors for low-cost embedded use, where you’re running off thousands of copies of a cheap product; it isn’t meant for that, anyhow. But for many uses its perfect, its cheap (come on – even a real official Arduino board and such is only $30.00 or thereabout – I’ve spent more for 2 meals at Jack in the Box before – and for a real “product” you wouldn’t embed the entire board anyhow; plus, compared to a BASIC Stamp 2 – its dirt cheap).

Give me open systems any day of the week; if they want to stay closed, good luck with that (it’s what drove me away from the BASIC Stamp 2 – Parallax’s compiler, which was binary only and statically compiled against various linux libs, only supported 32-bit systems, and my 64-bit workstation just wouldn’t work, and with static links – well, IA32 wouldn’t work either).

I agree with Andrew.

By the way, I believe the internal clock runs at 1 MHz.

Just talked to a customer service representative in Australia, after ordering one kit and being told it is out of stock / back ordered.

THE LEAD TIME FOR DELIVERY IS AT THE VERY LEAST 2 MONTHS!!!!

These are still out of stock :-(
Wanted to get a few of these little babies.

Highly disappointed with TIs website. I got on this within the first couple hours it went up, got the email confirmation and everything was AOK…. until 12 hours later I got another email saying I was on back order. No mention of how long to wait.

Had to give up on the TI store, the ‘card auth error’ was a no-go. However the Mouser website (set to the UK, ‘cos that’s were I am) shows the availability of stock as “due to ship in 10 days” (we’ll see…) and a factory lead time of “3 weeks”. The price is also just £3.34 each – which seems about right with the UK VAT added on. The Mouser site also shows that back order items ship for free, and as this is showing up as a delayed item, I *think* I just got mine shipped out FREE (the order page showed the cost of delivery as “£0.00″ via FedEx, where it should have been £12.00). So fingers crossed!

Others in the UK (probably other countries too) may want to try this route instead, and still get your free shipping. :)

@BikeHelmet

You’re not kidding about the cc info matching exactly, down to punctuation and contractions, eg st vs street. I had to guess a few times to get everything just right.

@Kris:

Yep, it’s pretty silly how strict it is. The lack of helpful error messages make TI’s store hard to muck through. :/

For those concerned about compiler support, clang has preliminary msp430 support.

Free shipping to Europe(!)

Just ordered 2 units.

I bought two :)

@The Cageybee
There is 1 timer (timer A) with 2 capture and compare registers. That allows you to drive PWM (hardware PWM) though you can only have one hardware PWM with this chip. And there is watch dog timer which you can also use to generate timing event.

@Peter
Yes, you can drive servos.

There are some code examples for different peripherals here:

http://focus.ti.com/mcu/docs/mcuflashtools.tsp?sectionId=95&tabId=1538&familyId=342

What the first poster does not realize, even the 4k/8k IAR KickStart allows more code space than there is flash on the MSP430 G series microcontrollers, and the CCE4 code limit larger than most of the F2 series (the full version of the G series micros) flash space.

Think small

For those of you still on the fence, there’s a sweeter deal to be had. Enter code HALFMSPTOOL at checkout and you can get it for only $2.15. I know I’ve ordered mine.

what special language does the arduino use? it seems to be straight c/c to me, though thoughtfully positioned under a decent framework of os libraries and a bootloader to make development easier than straight c. nothing keeping you from doing anythibg you want in c or c though that i can see.

I received the ones that I ordered straight from TI today, and I have a shipping notice for the units I ordered from Mouser.

Its not a bad little package, especially for $4.30 each. Sure, its limited, but its bang for the buck is extremely high.

I had a few questions about the LaunchPad so I contacted TI media relations and was put in touch with the marketing manager for the MSP430 Value line. The $4.30 price is set in stone and is not going to change. The LaunchPad is completely open (sans software) and there are plans to add more uCs to the mix. I posted the full Q and A session on my site. http://themakersworkbench.com/?q=node/394

Got my two yesterday.

JonnieCache: From TI Estore or from mouser?
I`m still waiting for mine