TI Stellaris LM4F120 LaunchPad Review

TI Stellaris Launchpad

I finally received the Stellaris LMF120 LaunchPad from TI, which I ordered in September. I haven’t started playing with it yet, but thought of posting about my thoughts of the board after having the first look.

Contents of the kit

TI Stellaris Launchpad
As promised by TI, I had the following components in the kit

  • The launchpad board
  • USB A to micro B cable
  • An instruction card

What surprised me was that there weren’t any CD/DVD with the required software. I think for $5 you can’t expect more 🙂

Two MCU’s

The first striking feature of the board is that it has two LM4F120 chips. I guess one of them is used for on-board emulation, but I am not sure yet. There is also a device/debug switch on the board.

Two micro-B USB ports

The board also had two micro-B USB ports. I guess one is used for debugging the board and the other is used for connecting additional devices to the board.

Other components

The board also has a couple of buttons (I guess one of them is the reset switch), a RGB Led, two crystals, a current measurement jumper and couple of other components.

BoosterPacks

The GPIO pins are broken out into male pins (like Arduino) and they are pointing upwards. I suspected that it is for some kind of extension and then realized that Launchpad have an extension system called Booster Packs which is very similar to the concept of shields in Arduino.

Workshop

While visiting the link given in the getting started card, I came to know that TI conducts regular workshops which allows you to get started with Launchpad development. You can sign up for it from TI’s website. I am planning to attend it when I get some free time.

Pictures

You can checkout some more pictures of the board at Flickr.

On the whole what I have got so far is definitely worth more than $5 which I paid for the board.

Next I am planning to start playing with the board by running the built-in “Out of the box” demo 🙂

Update:

I just ran the demo program in Stellaris LM4F120 LaunchPad.

7 thoughts on “TI Stellaris LM4F120 LaunchPad Review

  1. crond

    for what exactly you bought this? for Any robotics apps? And did you say $5 or are you missing any zeros???? 🙂

    It is tempting me… BTW, do u have all additional h/w components, particularly the touch lcd?

    seriously, thanks for sharing … 🙂

    Reply
    1. Sudar Post author

      No, I didn’t miss any zeros. It was actually $4.99 to be exact.

      Well the number one reason I bought this was just to check it out. The MCU inside it is pretty good and has lot of features.

      I am now thinking of connecting it to Arduino and use it to control my robots.

      I have a huge collection of additional hardware/components with me. Will be hooking some components with it soon 🙂

      Reply
  2. Lieven

    The first LM4F120 is used as ICDI ( in-circuit debugging ) for the second LM4F120. The extra nice thing is that when you connect the first USB port to your PC, it presents 2 devices to the PC : the Stellaris ICDI and a virtual COM port. This virtual COM port is connected to the serial port of the main LM4F120. So you can program and communicate with the main LM4F120 with just a single USB port. Missed this feature on STM32 Discovery boards

    Reply
  3. Pingback: Testing TI Stellaris LM4F120 LaunchPad using demo program | Hardware Fun

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