STMicroelectronics has joined the ARM mbed project, a move that will provide free access to the mbed software, development tools and online collaboration platform. -
See more at: ST joins mbed project
May be someday we will see MBED on cerberus boards? 
Interesting
Ultimately I have to ask so whats the big deal and what does this have to offer? I’ve looked over mbed.org and can someone tell me how this is different then say Arduino? I see a lot of breadboards and wiring and pins in the code, and so Gadgeteer is still the unique player that it has always been with modules etc, and if I want breadboards, wiring and pins in my code, I can do that with Gadgeteer so I’m not sure that mbed is a step forward.
I’m giving a Gadgeteer demo to an investor accelerator group next month, so I thought I’d demo whipping up a weather station and use ThingSpeak or OpenSen.se (or both) and have it running in about 10 - 15 minutes, I doubt mbed could do that.
As far as I understand, the biggest strength of mbed is the online compiler and code libraries. My developer tools are always with me and extensive libraries are all in the same place.
This is the biggest weaknesses, too. I have yet to see an online application that does not suck (not even talking about something as good as Visual Studio is), and public libraries usually end up in a public mess…
Some info from another thread:
Online compiler i think is targeted for educational market. Because you can export projects from online compiler to “offline” chains as “uVision”, “IAR”, “Red Suite”, “Code Source” and etc. Also you can use right away mbed library without online compiler . What impressed me as i noted on other thread, i didn’t find much difference in abstraction level between NetMF and mbed. But everything in native level. Take a look one of not official STM ports, which should supports the same code base for STM32F0x, STM32F1x and STM32F4x lines.
Personally I do not like to work online.
This mainly has historical reasons, because we had very slow internet here.
Now I have a max volume of 10GByte per Month.
Starting with February I can get fast, unlimited internet for the 1st time here.
Also I always want to be able to work offline. It’s one thing to have online code hosting. But IDE, compiler, … must always be available offline for me.
Same for Office, games, …
SPI and I2C Slave implementations. May be not important, but nice to have.
Timer, Timeout and Ticker object’s precision in microseconds.
Also for the “wait” function precision is in microseconds.
More advanced multi threading based on RTOS.
http://mbed.org/handbook/RTOS
Full functional RPC, by the way with the library for NetMF.
Power management.
DSP library.
Events. Very similar as managed Events, but again in native code.
http://mbed.org/cookbook/Event-Driven-framework
Porting to mbed is not that complicated as for NetMF.
http://mbed.org/handbook/mbed-SDK-porting
Most drivers using mbed object model.
Also seems not that hard to port drivers from Arduino to mbed.
Compare enc28j60 drivers.
https://github.com/jcw/ethercard/blob/master/enc28j60.cpp
And most important, everything is in native code and performance.
Sample mbed_blinky project compiled by Keil for SMT32F4: “Program Size: Code=2188 RO-data=428 RW-data=40 ZI-data=1688.”
You cam use wide range of MCUs from low end STM32F0xxx to advanced STM32F4xxx.
And reduce development production costs, with MCU’s available in TSSOP20, 28QFN and LQFP32 packages.
If you interesting to know more about mbed, I would recommend to read this book.
@ slawek - interesting yes…
IDE and language are a down side for me personally.
There is very little for what i want to do that NETMF cant do…
Thanks for the info tho, might come in handy one day…
Justin, I agree. Maybe its my age… but these days I’m starting to resist having to learn new stuff all the time. NETMF and Gadgeteer allows me to do all cool things I need already and C# was what attracted me to the platform in the first place. I cannot see enough benefit to start chasing another bus at this stage.
No, Arduino headers ?!?!?!
I’ve been browsing the mbed stuff and even tried it. Correct me if I am wrong, but it’s not possible to connect debugger to their online compiler, right? If so, then it’s not my way of developing…
I hate Arduino headers.
@ simon - no online debugging in mbed. So far.
Primarily MBED is the framework.
Application development is not necessarily to do on the online environment.
Let me show you one of the possible solutions.
Download and install LPCXpresso IDE from http://www.lpcware.com/lpcxpresso/home.
Free edition let you debug up to 256k of code.
Open online MBED editor. Select “mbed LPC1768” as target.
Just for testing, import some sample application, as “mbed_blinky”.
If you interesting to dig MBED Library source code, import into your application “mbed-src” library and delete “mbed” library. Compile application.
If application is succesfully compiled, select “Export Program”, make sure that target is “mbed LPC1768” and Toolchain is “code_red Red Suite”.
Now open LPCXpresso and import zip archive into your solution.
Build and enjoy.
You can also try and see how is easy to import other libraries as network, sdcard, filesystem and many many more.
If you interested to try the hardware, take a look for LPC1769 LPCXPRESSO BOARD
As you see in datatsheet, that board has LPC-LINK debugger and you can debug, make breakpoints, watch low level ports, perpherials, memory and etc. in high class Eclipse based IDE.
From the picture of ST Nucleo, seems there is STLink also.
@ slawek - Yeah I do have that 1769 board, but if I have to export project from online compiler to local one, how much “mbed” is it then? I understand managing framework and code is easy in online mbed site, but once I move to LPCXpresso this advantage is lost and I have to either a) sit with what I have b) do some magic and juggle mbed libraries in LPCXpresso (pretty much impossible) or c) move back and forth between LPCXpresso and online mbed. Neiher of that options are very inspiring.
What [em]would [/em]be inspiring, is a debugger support in online compiler. Any chances this happens in this decade?
This is getting exciting 
Exciting exactly what?
The possibility of online IDE with local JTAG and debugging.
Mbed also supports exporting a project from online to an offline tool like Kiel or GCC. So a local JTAG will help.