Following up from today’s Hack-A-Day post about development boards, I looked further into the Teensy platform and the chip they use. There is a “teensyduino” model which is compatible with the arduino platform. The impressive thing is, they use ATMEGA32U4 chip manufactured by Atmel.
The details of the chip are as below:
| Specification | Teensy | Teensy++ | Arduino |
|---|---|---|---|
| Processor | ATMEGA32U4 | AT90USB1286 | ATMEGA328 |
| Flash Memory | 32256 | 130048 | 30720 |
| RAM Memory | 2560 | 8192 | 2048 |
| EEPROM Memory | 1024 | 4096 | 1024 |
| Total I/O | 25 | 46 | 20 |
| Analog Inputs | 12 | 8 | 6 |
| PWM (Analog Out) | 7 | 9 | 6 |
| USB Port | 1 | 1 | (serial only) |
The more impressive thing is that this chip(32U4) is priced at AU$7.50, whereas the ATMEGA328 is priced at $AU$9.80.
Now if you are using the 328 in a USB project, you then have to buy an FTDI chip which is another AU$7.90, so you are paying twice the price to use an inferior chip.
In the coming days, I will be designing a prototyping board that is arduino compatible(if possible) and it will appear on the proto-AVR website.