Is there a better MC dev kit (especially for ARM)

[straight_stewie]

Looking at getting back into microcontroller programming. I've been looking at getting either the microchip Explorer8 or PICDEM LAB II, because I like the ability to change out microcontrollers at will. Unfortunately, these to boards are missing an onboard programmer (which means they aren't much better than breadboarding), and they also only support 8 bit PIC chips.

What I really want to do is learn ARM (although any assembly will satisfy my craving), but I really like the easy of use those boards have. Do you know of any similar boards, or any boards meant for ARM based microcontrollers?

 

[Hackentosher]

Would the Intel Edison boards work? 

[Hackentosher]

3 minutes ago, Pangea2017 said:

they use x86 Silvermont

also intel have them discontinued

 

I think sparkfun might have something similar

[straight_stewie]

5 hours ago, Pangea2017 said:

STM Nucleo

Why?

- cheap

- have a debugger and programmer included (you want a debugger)

- different models for all the different applications

I'm highly considering just buying a nice JTAG P/D and alot of breadboard. None of the boards I've seen have the features I really want, which is the ability to not be locked down to one microcontroller. The MicroChip boards I mentioned come really close, but they lock you into 8 bit PIC microcontrollers. Most microcontroller chips themselves are less than $5, until you get to the really, really high end chips.

I have some experience with FPGA as well, so when I get ready for a board, it wouldn't be too hard to make a board that has various sockets on it, and use and FPGA or CPLD to do pin routing.

Of course the downside to this approach is that you lose built in interfaces like USB for low end chips, atleast until I build them myself.