RPi | Circuit Crush

Choosing a development board for your projects can be a daunting task. Given the large number of development boards available today, it’s no wonder.

For those who don’t already know this, let’s first come up with a definition for development board.

A development board is a small circuit board containing either a microcontroller, microprocessor (or both) which supplies the necessary components and software for design and programming.

Most of us are familiar with boards like the various incarnations of Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and even BeagleBone. These are some of the most popular options among hobbyists and makers.

Some of us are familiar with other, lesser known boards like Intel’s Galileo or Texas Instrument’s TI LaunchPad. [Read more…] about Choosing a Development Board for Your Project

Open source electronics “trainer” boards like the Arduino, Raspberry Pi, the BeagleBone and others have been an enormous boon to introducing more people to electronics and science.

This is because they make working with microcontrollers and programming easier by way of abstraction.

The popularity of these boards has exploded over the past 8-10 years or so.

In the past, using a microcontroller in your projects meant working directly with the micro and supporting hardware, programming in C, and a host of other things.

Be that as it may, there are reasons why the hobbyist should consider learning to work directly with the “naked” or stand-alone microcontroller. We’ll talk about some of those reasons in the words that follow, but first we’ll talk about the difference between a trainer and a microcontroller.