Introducing the Tiva Lauchpad

Everyone knows the Arduino (/Genuino), but some may less familiar with the Texas Instruments Tiva LaunchPad.  

I’m planning to use this in some future posts, so today is a quick intro. to this nifty little board. All views here are my own by the way - I'm not paid to give them!

The Launchpad is one of a bunch of low-cost boards built around ARM microcontrollers. Others include the Nucleo and boards by RedBear.

Working with these boards is similar to working with the Genuino. You write code on your PC and download it to the board via USB. 

What the Launchpad (full name Tiva-C TM4C123 Launchpad) gives you compared to the Arduino is much-increased processing power and added features.   

On the hardware side, for less than $20, you get an 80MHz ARM M4 processor; 256K of flash memory; a 12-bit ADC; multiple (USB, I2C, SPI, UART and CAN) interfaces;  43 GPIO’s; and several others features including PWM, Comparator and DMA modules. The board doesn't have wireless or ethernet, but there're still plenty of projects you can do without these. (Other boards in the Tiva series do have wireless connectivity - I'll take about these another time).

On the software side the Launchpad is a great way to grow your embedded skills. At first, you might choose to program it using the quick-and-easy Energia software environment. This makes writing Tiva software look-and-feel like Arduino code.  Or you might download Texas Instruments’ (free) Code Composer Studio environment. This comes with ready-made C-code examples (an API) that help you access the Lauchpad's features.  Ultimately you can move on to advanced embedded software techniques such as RTOS programming and the ARM CMSIS.

All round, the Launchpad is great value and has enough power to deliver serious results. It's something I'll be using frequently in future posts.