News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:LilyGO T-HC32 board with world’s smallest Arm MCU (HC32L1... by throwaway81523 on Monday May 23, 2022 @03:00PM (#31483515)
I saw that on CNX but why is it interesting? The board isn't unusually small compared with something like a Xiao or QtPy, It is 2.2cm * 3 cm, almost 2x the size of a Xiao, which is cheaper and much more powerful.
Re:LilyGO T-HC32 board with world’s smallest Arm MCU (HC32L1... by nicoburns on Monday May 23, 2022 @03:30PM (#31483845)
The idea is that you only use the board for development, and use the 1.6mm x 1.45mm (note: mm not cm) chip on a tiny custom board in production.
Re:LilyGO T-HC32 board with world’s smallest Arm MCU (HC32L1... by throwaway81523 on Monday May 23, 2022 @05:52PM (#31485239)
I guess that angle is interesting, but for most of us here, the board doesn't help that much in that case. The chip docs are all in Chinese, and it is a 4x4 CSP package with specific pin assignments so you have to route some very tiny PCB traces. I wonder what PCB fabs can handle that without charging a fortune. I believe there are some almost-as-small parts where you have more routing flexibility and a reasonable GCC port.
Re:LilyGO T-HC32 board with world’s smallest Arm MCU (HC32L1... by vbezhenar on Monday May 23, 2022 @04:59PM (#31484701)
What are examples of tiny boards where MCU size would matter? Usually boards are dominated by other components anyway.
Re:LilyGO T-HC32 board with world’s smallest Arm MCU (HC32L1... by zokier on Monday May 23, 2022 @05:20PM (#31484894)
One example are chips embedded in connectors, like for example what you see here https://www.ifixit.com/News/8448/apple-audio-adapter-teardow...

Although those are probably always some more specialized ASICs instead of some general purpose MCUs

Re:LilyGO T-HC32 board with world’s smallest Arm MCU (HC32L1... by thedingwing on Monday May 23, 2022 @03:18PM (#31483717)
This is notable not because of the board itself, but because of the incredibly small footprint of the MCU on it. This chip is ~40% smaller than the already tiny Kinetis KL02.
Re:LilyGO T-HC32 board with world’s smallest Arm MCU (HC32L1... by zokier on Monday May 23, 2022 @03:48PM (#31484033)
Although I must wonder if there are many applications where .5mm difference in package size is really meaningful
Re:LilyGO T-HC32 board with world’s smallest Arm MCU (HC32L1... by gruturo on Tuesday May 24, 2022 @04:07AM (#31489305)
Embedding a keylogger not merely in a cable, but actually in a connector?
Re:LilyGO T-HC32 board with world’s smallest Arm MCU (HC32L1... by valdiorn on Monday May 23, 2022 @03:50PM (#31484050)
What would you do with a tiny, tiny MCU?
Re:LilyGO T-HC32 board with world’s smallest Arm MCU (HC32L1... by em3rgent0rdr on Monday May 23, 2022 @08:32PM (#31486598)
Embed it in tiny, tiny things.
Re:LilyGO T-HC32 board with world’s smallest Arm MCU (HC32L1... by dvh on Tuesday May 24, 2022 @11:15AM (#31493193)
Add a humane user interface to action camera with crappy ui
Re:LilyGO T-HC32 board with world’s smallest Arm MCU (HC32L1... by a9h74j on Monday May 23, 2022 @10:33PM (#31487391)
Make it a bootloader for a merely tiny MCU?
Re:LilyGO T-HC32 board with world’s smallest Arm MCU (HC32L1... by dylan604 on Monday May 23, 2022 @03:19PM (#31483726)
A board called T-HC32 would be better priced at $4.20
Re:LilyGO T-HC32 board with world’s smallest Arm MCU (HC32L1... by phendrenad2 on Monday May 23, 2022 @02:39PM (#31483259)
But can it run Crysis?