chipKIT® Development Platform

Inspired by Arduino™

Fubarino Mini

Created Wed, 24 Jul 2013 18:44:00 +0000 by jmlynesjr

jmlynesjr

Wed, 24 Jul 2013 18:44:00 +0000

My Mini arrived today! Amazed at the 3-day turnaround from Microchipdirect.com.

For $19.95 USD, I got the Mini, male headers, and an USB cable(unexpected).

Not sure how they can ship FedEx for under $4.00 USD, but I'm not complaining.

Off to try and solder-in the male headers. TINY..... :geek:

James

EmbeddedMan

Wed, 24 Jul 2013 20:00:57 +0000

James,

I've hand soldered that CPU down to the Mini board many times (I hand built a total of about 25 Minis before Microchip started production) - the headers should be no problem. :-) Let us know if you have any questions or problems.

*Brian

jmlynesjr

Wed, 24 Jul 2013 23:00:07 +0000

Brian:

Hats off to you! I have not tried to solder any SMD devices(yet). I had no trouble with the headers. I copied the slow/fast blink example from the wiki and it compiled, downloaded and ran fine using linux32- 20130715. The USB cable is really the tail wagging the dog. I may have to tape it down to the desk!

I have a few first impression comments:

  1. In the middle of the pin-out table in the reference manual, J2-17, J2-18, J2-19, and J2-20 should be changed to read J1-17, J1-18, J1-19, J1-20.

  2. RPC4 is listed under J2-4 and J2-5. Doesn't look correct.

  3. The Mini is basically a 40pin DIP. Logically, to me, the J numbering should have wrapped around the bottom of the module(skipping the ICSP pins) and run from J1 to J40. My second choice would have been to have J1 and J2 run from 1 to 20 both counting from the USB connector side in the same direction rather than the flip that it does now. I'll get used to it. :D

  4. The USB address(driver) in the Tools->SerialPort menu was different than the one that comes up with my UNO. I assume because of using the internal USB hardware instead of the FTDI chip.

That's all so far. Time to figure out the PPS stuff and port over a couple of UNO sketches for practice.

James

jmlynesjr

Sun, 28 Jul 2013 00:44:40 +0000

Brian:

What is the state of the USB module at the termination of the boot loader process? Page 120 of the data sheet states that D+, D-, ID, and VBUSON can be used for GPIO when the USB module is not enabled. I assume this would be if your sketch didn't use Serial.

Also, USB prevents the use of SPI 1 since SCK1 uses RB11/Vbuson and it's not remappable? And UART 1 has to be remapped to use T1CK, UART 2 has to be remapped to use I2C 1? Any other gotchas?

Can you read an Open Office Spreadsheet(.ods) file? I've worked up a set of spreadsheets cross referencing a lot of stuff. Some of it might be useful in the Mini reference manual.

Thanks, James

jmlynesjr

Sun, 28 Jul 2013 01:55:02 +0000

Brian:

Another documentation issue:

What's the correct default UART 1 and UART 2 pin mappings? The manual says: UART1 pins 17(TX), 18(RX): Serial0.begin() UART2 pins 26(TX), 25(RX): Serial1.begin()

The github Serial Options section says: UART1: On board serial1 pins 17rx, 18tx: Serial0.begin() UART2: On board serial2 pins 26rx, 25tx: Serial1.begin

Thanks again, James

EmbeddedMan

Sat, 03 Aug 2013 01:35:13 +0000

James,

Many thanks for the great information here. I've added it to the list of things to fix in the user manual for the Mini - you have some very great points.

It will be a little while (couple weeks?) before I can get to it however - real life yet again intrudes on our hobby.

*Brian

jmlynesjr

Sat, 03 Aug 2013 20:25:05 +0000

Brian:

I'm not in any hurry. I have the curse of being a very picky reader. Love the product. If I can help improve the documentation, more the better. Let me know if you need a proof reader for the next version. LOL.

James

PS: Posted my pinout cross reference spreadsheets here: [url]https://github.com/jmlynesjr/chipKIt-Arduino-Examples[/url]. Maybe some of this would work in the user manual.

Jacob Christ

Mon, 05 Aug 2013 01:47:19 +0000

James,

I'm not sure if the latest stuff is in this repo, but Brian pointed me to this github in the past for the Fubarino SD and I know it has some Mini files in it as well.

https://github.com/fubarino/fubarino.github.com

Also, if Brian is putting the documentation here as well, it can be updated using pull requests.

Jacob

jmlynesjr

Mon, 05 Aug 2013 14:37:46 +0000

Thanks, Jacob.

I saw the github stuff. The Fubarino home page points to it. Guess it's time to learn more about github pull requests. So far, only have the push stuff down.

James

PS: DIP chips arrived from Thailand in record time. Excellent service from Microchipdirect.com.

Jacob Christ

Mon, 05 Aug 2013 15:26:16 +0000

James,

If you fork the project in your own github account and clone local copies. Then once you make your changes and push them up to your account on github you just need to click the pull request button. Its pretty easy.

Jacob

jbcard

Thu, 08 Aug 2013 11:56:48 +0000

Hi,

Is the next version of Fubarino Mini with a 128 K memory ?

Jean

EmbeddedMan

Thu, 08 Aug 2013 12:15:16 +0000

The current version (1.5) from Microchip Direct does have 128K of Flash. Is that what you're asking?

*Brian

jmlynesjr

Wed, 14 Aug 2013 19:41:00 +0000

Before you use any analog functions, look at the Board_Defs.h file for the correct pin numbers to use. The table in the Reference Manual doesn't match the Defs info.

James