I’m still fiddling with my mbed. Although, I haven’t put it to real use yet. I’ve got some ideas, but I just don’t have the time these days. One of the nice things about its programming system is that if I do have to step away for a while, it’s easy enough that I don’t have to go through any kind of learning curve again. The plug-and-go USB programming and online IDE is that easy.
Contrast that to one of my little PIC based boards. I recently wanted to do something with one that I hadn’t used for a while. I dug it up and pulled out my programmer. I somehow ended up with two different versions of the programmer software installed on my computer, and I had to try both. My programmer uses the FTDI USB/serial chip, so I had to try and guess which COM port to set my programmer software too.
Six permutations later, I had that figured out. I then loaded up an old known-working hex file and took my best guess at what the fuse settings needed to be and guessed wrong. Tried again and guessed wrong. Tried a dozen different combination and gave up and dug up the PDF of the data sheet. Once I found the setting and translated them to the language used in my programmer’s software, I finally figured it out and got it all working.
Granted, if I were using this every day, I wouldn’t have forgotten all those silly little details, but think about someone learning for the first time. Or, consider a hardware engineer that rarely uses microcontrollers. Once a year or so, some design does need a controller and some programming. I’m a big fan of PICs, but the programming system for many of them seems pretty archaic compared to a product like the mbed.
Duane Benson
I need gravy for the mashed potatoes in yesterday’s post
Whenever you finish a job or are going to put it a way for a while it’s not a bad idea to create a readme file that contains important information about software settings and other information you think may be helpfull next time you get back to it….
Now that you have figured out you settings did you document them somewhere or are you going to put yourself through this again?
That’s an excelent idea. I rely too much on paper documentation which tends to get filed or lost during long pauses.