Hi All, I've been eyeing on Cortex M3, namely STM32F207ZG to get started with ARM, simply because there's a cheap development Board at eBay. I can be considered as a pro with Microchip PIC, mainly using Mid Range 8-bit PICs, Microchip ASM and Hi-Tech C. But I need guide from all of you guys to jump start. Keil was recommended by the eBay seller and so I'm here. What is the recommended debugger/programmer? What are JTAG/SWD? As for PIC I'm using PICKit2, MPLab ICD2, ICD3.
Thanks Sam
... is that one of the first things to go in the cost cutting is the documentation and support.
That may be fine for an experienced user who already knows what they're doing, but can lead the novice wide open to fall into all the little traps.
For that price, I think you would be better looking at the TI (formerly Luminary Micro) Stellaris boards as they come as a complete kit ready-to-go out of the box - no faffing around trying to collect tools from multiple different vendors, and trying to piece them all together and get them to play nicely with each other.
eg, search.digikey.com/.../1794060
More: search.digikey.com/.../2621773
... then you should look-out for seminars, training, etc, by local distributors - they very often give kits away free.
(that's how I got my first Luminary Micro board).
Thank you guys. I'd like to start with developing a camera device. There are only 2 to choose from; STM32F207IG and STM32F407IG. I guess this http://www.keil.com/mcbstm32F200/ be appropriate. Any idea how much it costs? I've just requested a quote.
That's a bit ambitious for a first project!
:) Thanks for your concern, but I'm not a total beginner. Let's see if I can handle it when I get my DevBoard, otherwise I'll start from 'A' again. I found this article infocenter.arm.com/.../index.html .It really helps me understand a bit about Cortex M3 and I've bought this book too. ;) www.amazon.com/.../ref=sr_1_2 Wish me luck :)
Two biggest differences:
1) lower-end PICs don't have vectored interrupt. This makes modular programming a little bit difficult.
2) the clocking options are generally much more on the CMx chips than on the PICs. This can be challenging to new programmers. Luminary does a great job of having code example C code that shows how to set up a peripheral, to get a new user going.
Other than that, they are fairly transparent, as long as you code in a high level language.