I need to pick a development board for my project (different from Arduino as my professor stated).

My project will consist of a solar panel,a development board,an fish tank resistor,an inverter and some typical AC consumers.

I want to measure photovoltaic panel parameters (voltage,current,luminosity) on a large period (a couple of months) and to process that data in order to determine quality markers like performance,would -be costs saved...etc.
After that i want to connect that solar panel to some AC consumers via an inverter and directly to a fish tank resistor.So a typical scenario would be ...i have no AC consumers ,or i have electric surplus-> i start heating the water in the tank.

I know to program only the Arduino (and with the standard libraries).I want to start learning embedded programming on a new board and i don't know what to choose.For this project i will have to develop an interface in C# .NET probably .I will connect the GUI via serial port with the development board.

I was thinking of something like http://www.ti.com/tool/msp-exp430fr5994#1 but i don't know how big the community is and if they have good documentation for newbies.

Thank you in advance.

 

Have you looked at Picmicro, they have rafts of App notes for all types of applications, many incl code.
Max.

 

Thank you for your reply but from what i know PIC's are hard to program even a serial communication is tough to implement.

 

Thank you for your reply but from what i know PIC's are hard to program even a serial communication is tough to implement.

10Million users can't all be wrong!
Max.

 

sanzor, try this low pin count development board, you gonna love this. http://www.microchip.com/DevelopmentTools/ProductDetails.aspx?PartNO=DM164127-2

 

Learning to program embedded MCU's is always daunting at first, but the manifold awesomeness that you experience when you get the hang of it makes it all worthwhile.

I recommend microchip PIC MCU's, the documentation is good, tools are cheap, and a powerful Integrated Development Environment is a free download away.

And FYI- serial communications are tricky with ANY MCU, it's easy to trivialize, but there are so many variables.

 

I already decided on buying a PIC development kit.What do you think of this one http://www.tme.eu/ro/details/pic32-...oltare-microchip/olimex/pic32-pinguino-micro/ ?
@nestbulala it seems your board isn't easily available,thank you for your proposal nonetheless.

 

I have also bought a few Olimex boards for development.
Max.