I just received my Teensy 4.1 and I have to say it's pretty amazing. It's Arduino compatible (that is, will work in the Arduino IDE and can use many if not most Arduino libraries) but it has so much more hardware and flexibility it's nuts.

http://www.pjrc.com/teensy



600MHz Cortex M7 processor! Every digital pin can be an interrupt; it has 28 pins that can do PWM; SPI, I2C, real serial ports; native USB boot loader (no drivers); USB host mode with HID and other stuff... just so much.



It's not as cheap as knockoff Arduino but it has so much.

Check it out if you haven't seen it. I think it's going to be my go to Arduino thingy.

 

Oh, and also, it's teensy. Even with all that stuff it's way smaller than an Arduino.

 

I didn't even realize it has 10/100 Ethernet on board!

• ARM Cortex-M7 at 600 MHz
• Float point math unit, 64 & 32 bits
• 7936K Flash, 1024K RAM (512K tightly coupled), 4K EEPROM (emulated)
• QSPI memory expansion, locations for 2 extra RAM or Flash chips
• USB device 480 Mbit/sec & USB host 480 Mbit/sec
• 55 digital input/output pins, 35 PWM output pins
• 18 analog input pins
• 8 serial, 3 SPI, 3 I2C ports
• 2 I2S/TDM and 1 S/PDIF digital audio port
• 3 CAN Bus (1 with CAN FD)
• 1 SDIO (4 bit) native SD Card port
• Ethernet 10/100 Mbit with DP83825 PHY
• 32 general purpose DMA channels
• Cryptographic Acceleration & Random Number Generator
• RTC for date/time
• Programmable FlexIO
• Pixel Processing Pipeline
• Peripheral cross triggering
• Power On/Off management

 

geekspasm...... we all have it from time to time for cool *shiny* things...

 

geekspasm...... we all have it from time to time for cool *shiny* things...

This thing is amazing. Reading the specs... I mean, it has so much packed into it. Just wow.

 

@djsfantasi get a gander at this: https://www.pjrc.com/store/prop_shield.html

 

Yeah, I'm thinking about getting one of those to make a function generator that's better than my commercial unit.

 

I haven't had a chance to play with the 4.x series yet, but I've been using the Teensy line in personal projects for years. Paul at PJRC makes truly great dev boards, and the community support is excellent.

 

How is the Arduino compatible? Does it act like and AVR or PIC instruction se wise? Can it do an instruction per clock? 600 MHz is nothing to sneeze at!

 

32-bit Arduino compatible boards have been around for a while. Most have a mostly Arduino compatible programming environment and libs but you can still program them using bare-metal C for max performance and flexibility.

https://www.digikey.com/en/articles...-microchip-mcus-and-other-advanced-processors

The Teensy 4.1 is a nice spin on this theme.

 

How is the Arduino compatible? Does it act like and AVR or PIC instruction se wise? Can it do an instruction per clock? 600 MHz is nothing to sneeze at!

Arduino compatible means it uses the Arduino language and it fits into the arduino ethos.
Paul who designs the Teensy is an avid member of the Arduino design team,
A lot of his software is now in the Arduino library,

Arduino is great in that it is not processor specific,
the language and HAL abstract that for the user,
Thus if you talk to I2C (1) on any Arduino with I2C(1) it will work.

Same for GPIO(0) etc,

The Teensy 4 are fantastic,

 

I treated myself to a teensy 3.6 2 years since... The specs on that were through the roof.. I did manage to get a decent TFT on it, but I haven't touched it for about a year...

Looking at the 4.0.. Not much changed.. Not enough for me to get another..

 

How is the Arduino compatible? Does it act like and AVR or PIC instruction se wise? Can it do an instruction per clock? 600 MHz is nothing to sneeze at!

Hey, Dick. the compatibility is on two levels: it works with the Arduino IDE and it can use a large number of the Arduino libraries and sketches without modification.

It's a viable Arduino "alternative".

 

Looking at the 4.0.. Not much changed.. Not enough for me to get another..

"Not much" is in the eye of the beholder, I suppose. Four times the RAM and 64-bit hardware floats is a huge change for many. The 4.1 has Ethernet, which can be a make-or-break requirement.

In any case, the various Teensy lines don't replace each other, rather they each serve different needs in terms of resources and size. For example, if your application needs a very small 32-bit ARM dev board with modest I/O, I'd recommend a Teensy 3.2.

 

Hey, Dick. the compatibility is on two levels: it works with the Arduino IDE and it can use a large number of the Arduino libraries and sketches without modification.

It's a viable Arduino "alternative".

Staying in the Arduino sphere (standard Arduino API designed for a single thread of execution) seems a little limiting with that type of horsepower. A person with the technical sophistication to fully utilize a Teensy 4.1 will eventually IMO start to look for actual Arduino "alternatives" with robust OS level process and threaded driver protection from user errors.

 

"Not much" is in the eye of the beholder, I suppose. Four times the RAM and 64-bit hardware floats is a huge change for many. The 4.1 has Ethernet, which can be a make-or-break requirement.

Suppose.... I really dont use these to the full... the full SD interface is what I was looking at.. with that amount of memory you can page full screens... lightning fast GUI's..

 

Staying in the Arduino sphere (standard Arduino API designed for a single thread of execution) seems a little limiting with that type of horsepower. A person with the technical sophistication to fully utilize a Teensy 4.1 will eventually IMO start to look for actual Arduino "alternatives" with robust OS level process and threaded driver protection from user errors.

There are other programming environments for the Teensy. The cool thing about Arduino compatibility is east of application. The strategy seems to be creating sophisticated libraries that can be glued together in the Arduino IDE. The developer writes things for it in other environments.

One project even used the previous 4.0 to run Tensor Flow and do edge AI gesture recognition. That CPU is great.

 

Nice.

The 600Mhz is a wow, but the rest is kind of a yawn compared to the PSoC platform I've been using. (and others from Cypress)

I guess if Arduino is your thing...

 

Staying in the Arduino sphere (standard Arduino API designed for a single thread of execution) seems a little limiting with that type of horsepower. A person with the technical sophistication to fully utilize a Teensy 4.1 will eventually IMO start to look for actual Arduino "alternatives" with robust OS level process and threaded driver protection from user errors.

@nsapook

Just because I drive a tesla does not mean I want to drive fast, I wont need all that Horse power, but its there when I do
same with a processor.

If an Arduino gets some one into other was to program, that great as far as Im concerned.
For instance the Teenseys, I guess like most other Arduinos ( Ive only used Teenseys for a few years ) one can program in pure C++ or ASM o a RTOS if you want, its all there,

https://disconnected.systems/blog/bare-metal-assembly-on-the-teensy-3.1/

 

@nsapook

Just because I drive a tesla does not mean I want to drive fast, I wont need all that Horse power, but its there when I do
same with a processor.

If an Arduino gets some one into other was to program, that great as far as Im concerned.
For instance the Teenseys, I guess like most other Arduinos ( Ive only used Teenseys for a few years ) one can program in pure C++ or ASM o a RTOS if you want, its all there,

https://disconnected.systems/blog/bare-metal-assembly-on-the-teensy-3.1/

I agree getting into programming but when you eventually find that all the horsepower is connected to a VW 8-bit Arduino chassis as a comprise to compatibility it's a shame IMO. The bare-metal/RTOS programming examples are exactly what I'm talking about with technical sophistication wanting something different.