[HH] $5 microcontroller development board: TI Stellaris LaunchPad

[Tom Metro]

I ran across mention of this development board from TI being priced at
only $5, though this article:

http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2012/11/a-13-arm-single-board-computer/

says it is $13. Either way, it is likely priced at below cost, as the
micro itself sells for nearly $5 in 1K quantities and the board has 2.

This board has an 80MHz 32-bit ARM Cortex M4 microcontroller, 256KB
Flash, 32KB SRAM, 2KB EEPROM, dual 12-bit ADC, and 43 GPIO pins.

And like most modern dev boards, it interfaces via USB. TI supplies a
proprietary toolchain, but apparently there are open source alternatives.

Not a particularly small looking board, so might not be a good choice if
you are looking to embed the dev board into a space constrained project.

While it's cheap, you can get Arduinos for around $10 to $15, and will
undoubtedly find a larger community of developers, so an Arduino is
probably the better choice for a one-off hobby project.

See also:
http://dangerousprototypes.com/2012/10/01/review-of-the-stellaris-launchpad/

for a briefer intro (and better photo), followed by some discussion
about the toolchain.

 -Tom