Help evaluating Keil for embedded ARM applications

Christopher

I'm aware or a couple of evaluation boards that have the potential for 6 or more UARTs. The TI TM4C1294 Connected LaunchPad has a TM4C1294NCPDT processor that according to the data sheet has 8 UARTs.  ST Micro has a 32F429IDiscoery evaluation board with a STM32F429ZI processor that according to the data sheet has 4 USARTs and 4 UARTs.  The question I don't seem to be able to answer without investing a lot of time is given the way pins are multiplexed, can I really have 6 (or more) UARTs available to my application along with I2C and some kind of SD or flash memory.  Just as importantly, how much effort will be required to learn how to use the CMSIS (or whatever is available) drivers and will the drivers from whatever peripheral library makes sense support all the UARTs available on the processor.The cost of the evaluation board isn't an issue, it is just the amount of time I will have to invest to get up to speed with even a brutally simple multi-UART controller with the ability to log 100s of MBytes of data.  The data doesn't come in very fast but my app logs a lot of internal engineering data and the whole thing has to run for years on an autonomous oceanographic platform. If I can get those 2 functions working, plumbing in all the rest of my app which is basically a classic state machine with a FIFO queue to handle asynchronous data from the UARTs is relatively straight forward.

Unfortunately the whole field of oceanographic instrumentation is pretty much stuck several decades behind current technology and almost everything is RS232 based. Hence my need for lots of UARTs.  I can and do use I2C UARTs but having some native UARTs with effective and easy to use interrupt driven drivers is really helpful.

Thanks for the help

Gene

Christopher

I'm aware or a couple of evaluation boards that have the potential for 6 or more UARTs. The TI TM4C1294 Connected LaunchPad has a TM4C1294NCPDT processor that according to the data sheet has 8 UARTs.  ST Micro has a 32F429IDiscoery evaluation board with a STM32F429ZI processor that according to the data sheet has 4 USARTs and 4 UARTs.  The question I don't seem to be able to answer without investing a lot of time is given the way pins are multiplexed, can I really have 6 (or more) UARTs available to my application along with I2C and some kind of SD or flash memory.  Just as importantly, how much effort will be required to learn how to use the CMSIS (or whatever is available) drivers and will the drivers from whatever peripheral library makes sense support all the UARTs available on the processor.The cost of the evaluation board isn't an issue, it is just the amount of time I will have to invest to get up to speed with even a brutally simple multi-UART controller with the ability to log 100s of MBytes of data.  The data doesn't come in very fast but my app logs a lot of internal engineering data and the whole thing has to run for years on an autonomous oceanographic platform. If I can get those 2 functions working, plumbing in all the rest of my app which is basically a classic state machine with a FIFO queue to handle asynchronous data from the UARTs is relatively straight forward.

Unfortunately the whole field of oceanographic instrumentation is pretty much stuck several decades behind current technology and almost everything is RS232 based. Hence my need for lots of UARTs.  I can and do use I2C UARTs but having some native UARTs with effective and easy to use interrupt driven drivers is really helpful.

Thanks for the help

Gene

Christopher and Johannes

Great, that is just what I was looking for.  Now that you know I just need the UART pins are there any other boards you'd recommend?

Thanks

Gene