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USB-Stick as development systems.

It's the fad of the moment and, we, as designers, do love these Gadgets!
But what they are? Are Development Tools in USB Stick format simply toys or are they offering a complete and reliable debug system?
Surely the latter, because the capability (some of them have an ARM on board) and the versatility make a quality product highly useful for the developers. Some time ago I had the opportunity to "test" the Texas Instruments' Stick USB, the Ez430, related to the MSP430 Low Power Microcontroller, and I have to say that this "Gadget" (please note the quotes) surprised me, for its capabilities and easy of use. After 10 minutes I was already in step_by_step debug with my first application on Stick! (Ok, I did flashed a LED under interrupt while I had controlled the inputs in polling with debounce software, but the start-up times were reduced to a few minutes!!! )
Also, the really low costs of these Development Tools (I will not call them gadget anymore) allows you to evaluate any system before you start to design ..... starting from $ 10 and almost none of the presented Tools exceeds 50$
As far as I remember, TI with MSP430 was the first to launch this "fashion", and now the market is full of these Development Sticks, so I decided to see which new micros we can play ...(Ooops!) work with , to evaluate and then design, develop and go into massive production.
(The correction was necessary, otherwise, distributors and representatives will not give us any more Stick )

The Ministry Information Industry (MII) of China enforced all mobile phone manufacturers to comply with new issued standard for phone charger interface, which is called YD/T 1591-2006 mobile phone charger and interface requirement and testing method. Before launching this standard, every mobile phone manufacturer has own power adapter interface with different electrical and physical specifications. Due to business and technical reasons, some vendors even offer different power adapters for same brand! This standard unifies the AC/DC power adapter interface with standard USB type A output on 5V DC, therefore new mobile phones from different vendors can share common adapters or be charged with standard PC USB port. The Mobile users can just carry one USB cable and phones on the go, since the USB port is available anywhere. It is anticipated that this approach can reduce power adapters in retail package, and reduce overall BOM cost and the pollution with the abandoned mobile phones.

I am Qprox QUANTUM consultant and Design Partner Microchip Technology, but now I have decided!
In the next project I'll use a Cypress Semiconductor product! Why?
Because Cypress is performant... as the rest of its employees!

The USB specification was introduced in November 1995. USB was promoted by Intel, Microsoft, Philips and US Robotics. Originally USB was intended to replace the multitude of connectors at the back of PCs, as well as to simplify software configuration of communication devices. A USB system has an asymmetric design, consisting of a host, a multitude of downstream USB ports, and multiple peripheral devices connected in a tiered-star topology.[Wikipedia, USB]
Universal Serial Bus (USB) connects more than computers and peripherals. It has the power to connect with a whole new world of PC experiences. A major advantage when using USB is Power (Vbus) is bus powered devices, so called bus powered devices can draw their power from the usb bus without using any external power supplies or sockets. Careful considerations must be made according to the following criteria.
But behind all these, it is an entire world about USB. Discover it in our 100% USB Book!

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