Bambino, a new gadgeteer mainboard

Archive
#1

This is a new gadgeteer mainboard from Micromint. It uses the LPC43xx chip, which includes dual cores, an M4 for NETMF and M0 for possible native work. The company lists this as open-source so we look forward to messing with the code.

http://www.micromint.com/component/content/article/39/196-bambino200.html

Well done Micromint and we look forward to seeing more offers from you and others, those who truly believe in Gadgeteer. Live long gadgeteer :slight_smile:

4 Likes
#2

Always nice to have additional options. I do like having the power onboard.

I wonder how mbed will work the 10pin sockets, if their concept is similar to what GHI is planning.

#3

It would be really sweet if mbed built drivers around the gadgeteer sockets. Then you can use the modules in C.

#4

Interesting board. The lower end version has 5 sockets.

#5

Interesting board, competitive price. I wonder how they can support the two processors within the code?

#6

Definitely a good looking board. Needs a nice large serial LCD for it. :slight_smile:

#7

really nice indeed, and the price is just awesomeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

#8

Very interesting “Bambino” is italian word for child, ahah… this MCU is a dual core M4/M0. How it works ? The MCU shares pins and features ?

#9

Steve Ciarcia still lives…

#10

I like the master slave approach where some tasks are delegated to the other core :slight_smile: and some even dynamically during compile. Downside for me, CAN is used in the demo but not available in the first release…

#11

This is a really exciting announcement. I love seeing more offerings & competition in the Gadgeteer world :slight_smile:

#12

So based on the image, are tasks setup to use the M4 & M0 used automatically by NetMF behind the scenes?

#13

Looks like my mainboard collection just got bigger, so cool. Gadgeteer ROCKS!!

#14

I listened to the video. I believe that software was only discussed on one slide. I have to take a wait and see position at this time.

With experieince with both cores, and a bit of software expertise, GHI should be able to produce something interesting.

#15

It would seem they moved the video. The new link is here:

#16

So based on this screen grab at 3:53, are they saying the firmware is taking care of the division of tasks across the CPUs (in .NETMF at least, looks like with mBed you can choose which CPU to execute a specific task)?

The way I interpret it (with my lack of h/w & firmware understanding) is:

VS2010/2

  • Deploy C# app to M4.

M4:

  • My C# app does an AnalogInput.Read().
  • M4 instructs M0 to read

M0:

  • Does the physical read
  • M0 passes result back to M4

M4:

  • Passes the result back to my C# app
#17

I’m wondering what the advantage of such a system would be… wouldn’t it be simpler and just as fast to have the M4 do the ADC read? Is it doing the read asynchronously?

#18

@ mhectorgato - I of course have no clue, but my guess would be. NETMF actually runs like normal on M4 and you can write native code for the M0 and just kick that off from the NETMF side. Analog is done by a sepearate peripheral any way, so I see no real win there, but something like SignalGenerator which is bit banging might be an ideal fit, since it would be using core CPU resources at the moment but can be off loaded to the M0. I do this with the DL40 at the moment for example so it is an appealing option to me.

#19

hmmm…i think i’d much rather a multicore where code can be paralleled across multiple cpus. doesn’t sound like that is the case here. this seems as though its basically bringing two controllers into one board.

#20

Thank you for providing a better example :slight_smile: