I'd get one of these, but:
1) Site offline? Can't compile.
2) No net access? Can't compile.
3) Want to keep source code private? Can't compile.
This is not the way to do things. Other microcontroller boards have local compilation environments, so why not this one?

Hi Chessplayer,
I'm not familiar with this product, so you're saying that no Internet connection and I cannot use it?
If so, that sucks. So much for working at the beach...

It is quite easy to set up an offline compiler for the LPC1768. There are several manuals for that on the internet. And as long as you can generate a .bin file, it is just a matter of dragging and dropping that into the mbed usb-drive and resetting the device by the hardware switch or by a cntrl-brk sent from a serial terminal. Only downside of offline compiling is that you don't have full access to the embed libraries. You can find the .h and .o files in their svn, so maybe someone can make even that work. Wonder how difficult it would be to get the xduino environment to work with this board. That should provide an arduino like environment offline.
The ease of working with this device --no need for any additional interface to program it, and a programming environment which has been made as simple as the arduino environment-- for me makes this an excellent choice for learning to work with these processors, but also for quite advanced projects, recognizing though that not all processor pins have been brought out to the header rows.

This looks like a very capable platform. Probably the best choice to step up to from Arduino.

For offline compiling of an RTOS no less, check out http://mbed.org/forum/mbed/topic/272/
Seems quite possible, although I imagine you lose their libraries unless you also link in them. The libraries are cost and royalty-free (as I understand) so they could be useful.
Chairs,
Bruce

Hi Cheeseplayer, Kam, Jassper,
I've been using this for a little while.
The online compiler works well for prototyping and hacking. As the target is just an LPC1768, any toolchain that can target that micro, can target mbed.
That said, I've not found the need/motivation to use an offline compiler yet.
Hope that helps
There are some interesting conversations on this sort of thing in the mbed forum :
http://mbed.org/forum/mbed/topic/130/

Can you not use a normal C/C++ compiler, like Code Blocks or something?

I have been using one of these for a few months. This is really easy to use and has a great selection of projects that you just load and go. The online compiler (mbed.org) is not so great but functional.
I am running 4 serial devices and a parallel LCD display in my home built in-car vehicle dynamics logger.

I have one of these and it's really well thought out. You can literally get going in a couple of minutes. Their library support is quite extensive and the growing user community has added lots of breadboard circuits and code to use as examples. It's essentially a clever marketing tool by NXP. One caveat, however, there is no debugging with this setup, other than printing things to a terminal emulator.

Sparkfun, have you looked into the LPCXpresso dev boards by NXP? One of the senior engineers at my company gave me one to help me learn ARM programming.

http://ics.nxp.com/lpcxpresso/

• There are ARM M0 and M3 versions.
• Each board comes with a removable JTAG debugger which can be used with many of NXP's ARM chips.
• Cost is about $30 from many vendors.
• IDE is based on Eclipse and comes with an awesome set of sample projects, code libraries, and getting started guide.
• Code libraries include demos of all peripherals, software UART, and freeRTOS.
• Breadboard compatible, or there are expansion boards available.

Any idea on when these will be available now?

If someone own's one of that nice toys and sits in front of a *nix box here
http://mbed.org/users/jgnoss/notebook/mbed-offline-on-nix-with-gnueclipse/
you will find how you can use them offline with open source tools.
Ju

What is the temperature working range for this board?

Is there any chance SF will develop/sell a breakout board like this: http://www.coolcomponents.co.uk/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=23_29_41&products_id=608

This is a really neat device. I am using this device as part of my senior design project. The team and I are developing a video game console with this device. If you are interested you can see our progress here:<br />
<br />
mbed Game Console (mbedGC)<br />
http://www.mbedgc.com/<br />
<br />
and <br />
<br />
http://www.armtronics.com/

These are $65 CAD on DigiKey with no bulk discount lol. Got one of these coming in my en route SFE order. Can't wait to play with it. I wanted to work with ethernet. Arduino Ethernet shield or Mbed? Definitely Mbed for me. I wanted to try an ARM chip anyway.

Is there any way at all to compile code for this thing using GCC or a variant, or just some way of not doing it online. I'm sure im not alone by saying that I don't like the way everything is web based now.
Can anyone help because i'd like to buy one of these, but the crappy web IDE is holding me back
Ps. Preferably GCC or whatever on Linux?

Will any kind of DIP 40p socket fit this unit?

Mbed has had a number of improvements as of late. You can use the tools offline if you want, but the online tools work fine.

New targets and most of the Arduino shields work with the Freescale and ST boards, which are very cheap.

Bluetooth LE and IoT support.

Our experience with the mBed platform has been quite positive. I know that many of the reviews here are quite bad because of the offline access issues of the IDE.

However, I want to note that the strengths of this platform are incredibly POSITIVE and should be emulated by the Arduino community as an example of how to do cloud compiling right.

The good?

• The IDE is in the cloud so setup involves registration with the website.
• Demos on the website have a one button install feature that puts the code directly into your online IDE.
• Code version management is done with mandatory mercurially SVC, built into the product. It works SEEMLESSLY! Multiple people can work on the same project and commit their changes incrementally.
• The low level API is real C++ environment and doesn't have any of the idiosynchriocies of Arduino's IDE messed up C++ environment involving header inclusion, object file linking issues, and global library issues.
• The API includes THREADING support out of the box and so far has a nice and clean object oriented approach.

My experience with this platform was to make a quality assurance machine that would test the assembly of panels of electronics for our product, Zackees Turn Signal Gloves, and report which PCBA were failing. We have been extremely happy with the environment and we recommend that anyone who is looking for a really well functioning and integrated environment to get the job done give this platform a try.

In closing, I'd like to say that the learning curve for the mBed platform was on par with the Arduino setup, but has better developer scalability as the project grows.

Look up STM32F4 you can fins it from around $15 to about $30

Why do people dislike thinks they cant understand?--- Answer; Fear. 1. Get an mbed.

2. Go to the LPCXpresso IDE page, and register an account. Once that is done, download the appropriate version of the IDE for your platform.

3. Install the IDE. During setup, you might be asked if you want to install the Debug drivers and the NXP-link drivers. These are completely un-necessary if you are going to be using this IDE strictly for the mbed. The mbed unfortunately cannot be debugged, nor can the chip be completely reflashed, as the mbed module lacks the JTAG breakouts.

Once installed, run the IDE. To stop the annoying nag message, you should activate your product (it’s free). To do this, go to Help>Product Activation>Create Serial number and Activate. This will give you a serial number. On the LPCXpresso IDE site, you can click My Registrations, and enter this serial number. Once you do that, check your email. You will have received an activation code. Go to Help>Product Activation>Enter Activation Code and paste in the code emailed to you. This will register your IDE. Again, this step is optional, but it prevents a nag-box from appearing every time you open the IDE.

Can this easily interface with I²S audio CODECs and use its single-cycle MAC to do basic DSP processing? If not, what board should I use for that?

Does it have the JTAG leads on the header so I can use OpenOCD and a gcc based toolchain with it? I have a hobby project running on ARM7TDMI I'm looking to port to Cortex M, and this looks like a good candidate... But I need access to the JTAG interface.

So, I take it the mbed DIP is the development board? And you plug it into the application board (the other mbed product you sell) to get access to the peripherals on the latter?

Just looking into the mBed system. Unlike these kid's comments, ( I have been in embedded controls development for 35+ years now), this is a great idea. I just started playing with the online compiler and really like it. Powerful, simple, no revision control, not a ton of crap on my laptop..... For those of you that cannot think outside the box, you can get tether software to connect your laptop to the internet through your phone....duh?, if you can stop texting long enough to use it. That gets your emergency compile for your 200 lb. robot stuck in the woods, (because you neglected critical debugging in the garage), back to the house. I am tired of paying $100's of dollars for software IDE's...no Arduino nonsense here. Powerful processors with super capabilities......

Anybody know the dimensions for this mainly the horizontal pin to pin distance?

I just got this board but it looks like an extra resistor is soldered upside down onto one of the LEDs. The board itself seems to work but will it continue to do so? Is this a defect? Here's the link to the picture of the board and question posted on the mbed forums: http://mbed.org/questions/287/Issue-with-board-manufacturing/

They have a few more options for offline compilers now at http://mbed.org/handbook/Exporting-to-offline-toolchains. New support for hardware breakpoints via the USB cable for debuggers using offline tools just came out. An officially supported networking stack was also recently released.

I've had one of these for a while. It's easy to underestimate exactly how powerful this thing is. The huge amount of flash means you can put a lot of code into it. The RAM is comparitively small, especially since the online compiler reserves 32K(half) of it for peripherals.

However, it's completely possible to generate monochrome VGA signals without any components except for a single resistor, and there is still a lot of processing time left over(ie, can't even tell it's displaying things). The community is very good as well. The online compiler I'll admit does have it's quirks, but it's improved a lot since I first got my mbed. The coolest thing about the online compiler is of course that it just works, and also when you find a library, it's a click away to import into your project through their online compiler.

Probably my biggest complaint about the mbed though is that it's not easy to set up an offline compiler and take all your code from their online IDE. I think it'd be awesome if you could just push a button and download your code from their website and then compile it locally, possibly even with some Mercurial goodness in there for pushing and pulling. But, it's my understanding that they can't do that because the ARM compiler they use isn't free. The other big problem is that exceptions are disabled by default in their compiler, along with a bunch of other weird things. There is no way to change the options sent to the ARM compiler(this small fact caused me to completely scrap a project because it'd require a near complete rewrite)

They just announced a basic RTOS that works on mbed using the online compiler. Just compiled and ran the demo to blink two LEDs using two threads. You don't have to use it unless you need it. Add the RTOS library to your project and one include line in your C/C++ to use it.

http://mbed.org/handbook/RTOS