Explore M3 is an ARM Cortex M3 development board powered by a micro USB port, with plenty of I/Os, Arduino compatible, and the developers have also written many tutorials to help people getting started as fast and easily as possible. A starter kit with cables and sensors is also available with the board.
Specifications:
- MCU – NXP LPC1768 ARM Cortex M3 @ up to 100MHz with 512KB flash, 64KB RAM,
- USB – 1x micro USB 2.0 OTG port for programming and power
- Expansion Headers – 2x 20-pin male headers + 8-pin unpopulated header with 38x GPIOs, 4x UARTs, 2x CAN, 2x SPI, 2x I2C, 6x PWM, 5x ADC, 1x DAC, 2x interrupt pins, I2S audio, and power signal
- Debugging – JTAG/SWD Debug connector
- Misc – USB boot and reset buttons
- Dimensions – 55mm x 25mm
The hardware is somewhat similar to mbed LPC1768 board but with a few more I/Os. The breadboard friendly board can be programmed with the Arduino IDE, but you can also go “bare metal” using ARM-GCC and Ellipse, or other tool chains like Keil or Co-IDE. Alternatively, the board also support FreeRTOS real-time OS. You can find close to 50 tutorials for all three programming options on ExplorerEmbedded Wiki, and some source code is also available on Github.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
