Microcontrollers with dual (or more) ADC's...

[JPortici]

Then you read the reference manual and the errata...

Then you read the reference manual and the errata from their competitors and really start crying and cursing marketing departments.

[hli]

PSoCs are available with multiple ADCs. Pretty sure they are delta-sigma though which may not be appropriate for you.

PSoC5 comes with dual SAR ADC and (in the bigger models) one DelSig ADC. You can easily trigger them from the same internal timer signal. In addition you can have 4 S&Hs before the ADCs, giving you 4 channels. And then you also have some OpAmps...

[Molenaar]

Beware that for the TI cortex devices simultaneous sampling will introduce an offset. It's described in the errata.

[Howardlong]

PIC32MZ EF has 5 + 1 ADCs, and they're reasonably high speed too, about 3MSa/s each for 12 bit resolution. The sixth ADC can be used similarly to the other five except its triggering works differently and also supports many multiplexed inputs.

They're a bit of a bugger to configure.

[Smokey]

So it's pretty funny because I'm the stereotypical engineer that used lots of 8bit PICs back in the day and was looking forward to something new.. PIC32MZ has a ton of peripherals for the price through (but no DAC dammit!)....

This probably deserves it's own thread... but...
What's the "real" cost of using the PIC32MZ with stuff like Ethernet and USB?
Such as:
1) Compiler cost?
2) Ethernet stack?
3) USB stack?
4) etc?

[Howardlong]

Biggest cost will be your time learning/fighting the Harmony framework nonsense which you pretty much have to use if you want to use Ethernet or USB.

Personally I work on a hybrid way, coding up everything else in the usual way at register level with my own libraries, and let Harmony do the network and USB stacks.

You can use the free compilers to do this.

[JPortici]

Biggest cost will be your time learning/fighting the Harmony framework nonsense which you pretty much have to use if you want to use Ethernet or USB.

implying it's not the same with.. say... ST. except that microchip examples usually compiles out of the box.

[Howardlong]

Biggest cost will be your time learning/fighting the Harmony framework nonsense which you pretty much have to use if you want to use Ethernet or USB.

implying it's not the same with.. say... ST. except that microchip examples usually compiles out of the box.

I don't have any experience with ST, and presumeably you're referring to their Cube thing which as I understand it is a similar concept to harmony, and I assume it comes baggaged with the same impenetrable over engineered proprietary bug ridden strait jacketed bloat designed by computer scientists living in blinkered utopian ivory towers.

The alternative for the mid-level embedded world is a simple and reasonably clean API such as that offered by NXP in LPCxpresso.

The old MAL/MLA was not without its own problems, mostly around non uniform messy software stacks and hardware specific #ifdefs everywhere, but to replace one mediocre solution with a worse one is unfogiveable!

[JPortici]

I am referring at ye olde hal, cube aaaand spl.

The example projects (which by the way they have provided not to show functionality but because they can't write a decent datasheet that explains how to set up peripherals) should.. no MUST work out of the box. Open, compile, flash. With st even that doesn't happen

[Siwastaja]

I have no issue with STM32, but OTOH, I have refused to even try using the bloat libraries (where configuring the GPIO direction bit requires you to construct a configuration struct and pass it to a config function!).

From the very start, I used STM32 series products exactly how I used Atmel AVR MCU's from the 90's: by reading the peripheral documentation, and accessing the registers I want. No issues, despite all the naysayers! It works fairly well, because most STM32 peripheral configuration registers make actually a more sense than AVR registers, for example; they have to, because there is more complexity to manage due to having order of magnitude more features.

The biggest issue to me with the horror libraries is that every idiot likes using them, so any code examples and forum threads on the net are unusable and need a lot of deciphering.

Silicon bugs and severe documentation errors, most often totally unmentioned on errata, are still a problem, but you live with them with every manufacturer.

[Howardlong]

It's also a nightmare to try to create and share minimal code to reproduce a problem, with Harmony even a blinky is about a dozen odd files.

[danadak]

The PSOC 5LP family, some members have up to dual 12 bit SAR and a 20 bit
delsig.

The SAR can be HW triggered with external clock, so that both ADC can implement simultaneous
sampling.

Alternatively, you can get even more channels, by using S/H onchip component. Note I
have not done a resource count, I think you can get 4 S/H + 2 12 Bit SAR + 20 Bit DelSig
as a solution. Note the sequencing SAR block uses 1 of the 2 SARs.


Regards, Dana.

[danadak]

For me what stands out is -

1) Routability
2) Fast 12 bit SAR A/D and slow 20 bit DelSig
3) DFB (Digital Filter Block) that is dual channel, handle FIR or IIR filters, or DFB
can be used as a GP fast processor block, similar to RISC block
4) MSI logic elements GUI based and/or the UDB Verilog capability. Eg. the FPGA
like capability
5) Onboard Vref
6) IDAC, VDAC, OpAmps (up to 4), comparator, mixer, switch cap, analog mux....
7) LCD,  COM, UART, I2C, I2S, One Wire, SPI, Parallel, LIN, CAN, BLE, USB
9) Custom components capability, create with schematic capture or Verilog
10) DMA to offload processes like filters, COM, Display
11) ARM M0 (PSOC 4) or M3 (PSOC  5LP) or 8051 core(PSOC 3)
12) Extensive clock generation capabilities
13) All components supported by extensive prewritten APIs

https://www.element14.com/community/thread/23736/l/100-projects-in-100-days?displayFullThread=true

http://www.cypress.com/documentation/code-examples/psoc-345-code-examples

Great video library

Attached component list.  A component is an on chip HW resource.

Free GUI design tool with schematic capture, "Creator". Components have rich API library attached
to each component. Compilers free as well.

PSOC 4 is low end of family, consider 5LP parts as well. PSOC 4 also has arduino footprint boards (pioneer) as well

https://www.elektormagazine.com/labs/robot-build-with-cypress-psoc

http://www.cypress.com/products/32-bit-arm-cortex-m-psoc



Regards, Dana.