Modern G30/G80 Alternatives?

Out of curiosity, why wouldn’t they be able?

Are they lacking a peripheral or some other feature? What would be the lowest tier STM32 that could run sitcore?

The chip has very little memory. 20k of RAM is nothing.

It is plenty if you program it barebone but then it is unproductive. You just have to pick, spend the extra $$ or spend days or even weeks on simple things that take minutes on TinyCLR.

Plus we promised everyone at GHI a new Ferrari on next Christmas.

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That is probably a bad idea. You are now fragmenting the ecosystem. It either supports networking properly, full support, or it shouldn’t. We have done that long ago and things got confusing.

Of course you can always add a wiznet chip over spi or WiFi over serial but this should not be officially supported since this is not a quality commerical feature. GHI focuses on commercial use first but we always welcome makers.

Don’t get me wrong. I love sitcore and I find it way worth paying that little extra for it. I recently even convinced a client to change a requirement here and there just so I can work with sitcore :slight_smile:

Anyway, any job openings at GHI? I’m available from the start of December 2021 until the end of January 2021 :wink:

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I’m of the opinion that there isn’t a market for (very) cheap uC’s running a full OS. If you’re really really into high volume and BOM cost minimisation, you’re going to cheap out on software complexity and end up way down the price point and trim as much memory and features as you can - ultimately, the cost of software development gets amortised over way more products, so efficiency in development has minimal impact to final price. If you’re not into bulk consumer products where cost is king, you’re possibly going to go for a cheap (not very) and therefore more likely to not cheap out on memory/capabilities, and software costs becomes a relevant (but not necessarily important) factor. Then, if you’re more into niche products, that’s where software costs become a bigger factor.

To me the opportunity is about not having split-mode development for complex products. Having cheaper slave processors that don’t need a different toolchain and coding practices has big benefits in an integrated product. Big uC running the show and the GUI for example, and little ones running sensors, is the kind of scenario I really see benefit. But who knows how common that is as a scenario, certainly not me.

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I thought we were friends?

image

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nah, you’re a new zulunder !

Too true Bretto

Context added - thread fully derailed - apologies :rofl:

Dont get me wrong… I like the idea of cheap processors with a full OS, but can’t see it working in (very) cheap scenarios.
I’m clearly cheap (with a long line of Scottish ancestry) but don’t think the attiny85 users will really get much benefit from software dev cost improvement with an OS.

It’s a Pay-me-now-or-pay-me-later thing.

Either pay the native-code piper and climb a steeper code mountain and optimize down for minimal BOM cost; or pay the TinyCLR piper and slash your development and maintenance labor costs (and build on the code mountain that GHI already built).

If you are going to make thousands, then invest in native code and save on hardware as you scale.
If you are going to make tens or hundreds, then halve (or better) your development cost.

Either way, you are amortizing costs over a projected run of devices.

Where the break-even point lies is an exercise for Excel pilots.

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True for commercial users. I think this post is about “give me a board that is awesome but also cheap enough I can use once”. My answer to that was it only makes sense at $10 to $15 but not at $20.

What do you think?

Not to split hairs, but it still holds - you are amortizing your decisions over a run of one off-the-shelf device, so yes, the math favors a very cheap device that also has very cheap add-dev cost.

Yes… I propose that the product name be “Paradox”.

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Or, “Unicorn”

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I don’t understand… Unicorns are real.

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Or maybe we should all list the most important peripherals we use and have GHI make a board for $10 in large quantities. So we end up with low cost, high volume, full OS scenario. :laughing:

From past experience, everyone has a different list. I am sure someone will say it MUST have CAN and then other will say why does anyone need CAN :slight_smile:

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