open-source teensy-compatible - what features do you want?

There are so many microcontroller boards out there.
Somehow, each of them is probably Teensy-compatible, depending on which (more or less random) criteria you want to apply. It's just marketing. If it's going to be called “Freensy,” why not? Users will quickly discover that almost everything written specifically for the Teensy doesn't work.
The other question is whether that even matters. The thing is supposed to do its job; you're not in love with it. STM32 boards in particular are comparable. But then again, why Freensy? It somehow lacks a unique selling point.
 
Not sure why your trying to advertise a competing product on the pjrc forum.

If you honestly wanted a competing product to teensy. go the imxrt1170. Dual core. 1ghz. Everything teensy 4 has but more.

But be prepared to to realise how much work Paul has put into making Teensy 4 software (and hardware) side all work.
 
theboot900 said:
Not sure why your trying to advertise a competing product on the pjrc forum.
Click to expand...

Indeed this thread is quite outrageous in terms of etiquette. For now PJRC is allowing this forum conversation to continue.

For comparison, Adafruit's own forum allows only discussion of Adafruit products purchased directly from Adafruit or from official distributors.

1767919040255.png
 
When you come to rant, and take advantage of competitors product reputation for your own products, don't expect warm welcome and applause.
 
Wow... I have not opened up this thread until now. Was busy some other stuff. It is not at all what I expected!
What I see here feels absolutely nothing like being a Teensy other than form factor of T4 with exterior pins having similar names.
Who can say how compatible even those pins are? Like can I use pins 7 and 8 for Uart?

What I was expecting was a board that probably used bootloader chip from Paul, IMXRT 10... Hopefully with more IO pins exposed
that allowed some other features of the board to be easier to accessed, like for Camera or display or ... SDRam, etc.

What about the pins on the bottom of T4? IO 24-33, SDIO, USB Host...

I do hope Adafruit well, I do appreciate your products, even if I can not buy them from you any more, for some obscure rule you added after
buying stuff from you that you will no longer mail to PO/PMB boxes and we live away from town and do not have a mailbox... But that is
a different story?
 
@KurtE
Wasn't going to post. But how does that board in post 1 even come close to a Teensy 4 to be honest. Not sure I would even consider getting one.

No other comments on the politics or the busy decisions. Thats above my pay grade. All that I can say is that I but alot of Adafruit and Sparkfun breakouts.
 
Independent of Phil's try (btw on Adafruit's Website is a picture showing Limor (with Baby) sitting in front of what seems to be the design shown also in post #1) I would be curious what will bring the future for Teensy. I assume Paul will not be able to disclose details from the agreement he has with Sparkfun concerning future developments, say T5, but nevertheless...., and this is another thread and I'm not talking about add-on boards we were discussing earlier.
 
I had no idea who OP was at the beginning of the thread, because they didn't make any mention of it - I suspect that was intentional, trying to keep it "under the radar" and trying to make it seem like this was a case of a small open-source enthusiast being bullied by a large corporation.
Obviously that is not the case. This is a business being annoyed about having a revenue stream cut-off, so they're trying to come up with their own method which unfortunately seems to be based around duping people out of money for an inferior product. Fortunately people aren't that gullible, judging by the responses here and on eevblog.

(It's especially funny they think the T4 is controlled by a "closed source bootloader" when the MKL plays no part in the boot process besides turning power on...)
 
jmarsh said:
(It's especially funny they think the T4 is controlled by a "closed source bootloader" when the MKL plays no part in the boot process besides turning power on...)
Click to expand...
I guess, this is not quite right as this chip makes a MCU to a Teensy.
IOW, a board without this MKL chip can hardly be called Teensy compatible.

AFAIK, in addition to 'turning power on', the chip
- intializes the Hardware (https://www.pjrc.com/store/ic_mkl02_t4.html)
- allow secure mode Teensy (I guess, this is why the MKL chip will still programmed/sold by PJRC due to NDA with NXP)
- can turn teensy into factory reset (15 s button press)
- can upgrade itself (we have done that at least twice, IIRC)
- and copies the bootloader to RAM.

I would be interested to know, if by virtue of the MKL chip, there can ever be a Teensy compatible device (MKL + MCU) that is not using an MCU from the existing Teensy family (TLC, 3.x, 4.x).
 
WMXZ said:
- and copies the bootloader to RAM.
Click to expand...
It doesn't do this. It's not involved in the boot sequence (besides powering up DCDC at the correct time), that is purely handled by the IMXRT ROM based on the fuse settings.
If you have an alternative way to startup DCDC and a method to write to the attached flash, there's no need for the MKL to be present.
(The ROM itself actually contains basic functionality to program an attached SPI flash, as a recovery method... I probably wouldn't recommend relying on it, but it's there...)
 
Last edited:
@jmarsh, what you are saying is the T4.x chip can be programmed without MKL. that is fine.
We will not know the internals of the MKL chip and Paul will not chime in. So, I accept that you may be right with how the MKL potentially contributes to boot proceess.
 
That's exactly what I'm saying. The MKL could be replaced with something else and while it wouldn't be possible to upload code with Teensyloader, another util (designed to work specifically with the MKL substitute) could perform the same job and the board would be able to run any program built using the Teensyduino toolchain, the same as how the IMXRT106x devkits can. To me that would be a "Teensy compatible" board, assuming it had the same pinouts.
 
I wasn't going to post on this thread, but I do want to clarify a statement that is causing some confusion for my customers which is "sparkfun is now the exclusive maker and seller".

That is technically true, just as it was true that PJRC was the exclusive maker and seller before and could decide who would be allowed to distribute their products.

That does not mean that Teensy will only be available to buy directly from SparkFun. ProtoSupplies.com and I am sure other stocking distributors like Digikey are still being supported by SparkFun, just not Adafruit apparently.
 
ptorrone said:
oh wow, just to be super clear you mean windows 7 as in...
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/products/windows-7

this is good to know, can you tell me more? you're running win7? actively?

there are no security updates,. why not move to win10 or win11?

what’s keeping you stuck? drivers? software? i get it’s a pain, but at some point what are you going to do?

what breaks if you upgrade?
Click to expand...
Yup, still using win7 on one machine myself. My DAW setup would be a complete pita to reconfigure, with no guarantee that all the VST and VSTi would still work, or my older version of Cubase, without needing to also "upgrade", with either additional cost or reduced functionality. My DTP software is the next to last version that was standalone, and I refuse to take subscriptions for a hobby, or indeed want to have any software that needs a "cloud", internet or phone app connection to function. I don't do apps either - my phone is a rugged chinese android, with almost everything disabled, including google. Still works perfectly well for phone calls and text. I've read about multiple issues with the Mach 3 Mill software I use for my desktop CNC router in 10/11, and I have some "obsolete" bits that only just about work in 7 in xp compatibility mode, eg my slide/negative scanner. Manufacturer long gone. Upside - this machine works, it's reliable, and fulfils the functions for which I built it in the first place - its still an I7, with 32Gb and quad monitor. Only software that I've been vaguely interested in that won't work is JRiver - I have jriver19 installed on the win7 PC, but have a little bmax i7 minipc running win11 that's stripped back a little and dedicated to running jriver32 only, and there's bambustudio for my a1 3d printer, but as that requires cloud to function it's no great loss - I just use openscad, slic3r and an SD card. So, potentially lots breaks if I upgrade, but it works perfectly well as is. Probably nothing that couldn't be worked around with buying more stuff, and spending a lot of time on, but that's not really the point. It's my main home machine to play on, with nothing financial or sensitive on it, and I just made a setup that works, and locked it down. If it breaks, I'll either fix it, or go a different route altogether. It's just a tool to do things with, and if it becomes too annoying to use, I'll use something else. You know, the more old-fashioned idea of a personal computer:). This is probably opposed to the more modern cloud based computing - which is to my eyes essentially a variant of old mainframes, where you're basically a terminal operator given privileges. And paying handsomely for it...

As for the teensy, I've had nothing but help and support from this forum right from when I first got interested some years ago. It's a hobby interest, starting from a desire to make standalone MIDI controllers - I'm far more tactile than visual, and I want easy access to buttons, knobs, switches, meters. The built in MIDI, multiple UARTs, hardware interrupts on pins and the existence of this forum piqued my curiousity in the first place. Whilst my level of knowledge is pretty low compared to some of the people on here, I've always felt as though I've been treated with decency and courtesy. Please keep things that way. It's not something that I've always been able to dedicate time to, like most of my hobbies, so I've dipped in and out of it, and whilst like everybody I have some petty niggles and things I'd like to change, I've been nothing but impressed with the dedication evident here. Aye, there are other controllers, and of course I've played with arduinos and esp 32 as well because they're buttons to buy, but the teensy is my go to. I'm not a business, so I'm not hugely price sensitive, but the teensy is still the most suitable for the comparitively simple things that I'm trying to do. I'd rather have a quality thing that works, with enthusiastic community support, than try and save fairly negligible amounts for one off projects. That for me is the teensy :).

Paul Hesketh.
 
Please bring back these useful Teensy 3.X features that are missing from the 4.X:
- 5V pin tolerance
- On-board DAC
- High speed, low noise ADC
 
Well, this thread went down well with my popcorn! So as I understand it, Some at Adafruit have a long-standing beef with some behavior from SparkFun, so to "get them back" they propose open source hardware that differs completely from a Teensy 4.x in terms of capabilities, and advertise it on the Teensy forum as a "Freensy". Wow. That "showed them". lol. Thanks to Paul for letting this play out, although he must be itching to lock this, as it isn't very productive.
Also, as someone who has actually purchased an ESP32-P4 based board and given it a good hard whirl, I must correct a couple of points made - it DOES have a single-precision (32 bit) FPU per core, and it is currently a 360MHz part, NOT a 400MHz part - yes, you may see "400MHz" written in product descriptions and datasheets (occasionally written as "up to" 400MHz), but the latest ESP-IDF SDK locks it at 360MHz as they (ESP) experienced issues at 400MHz, and you can't change it from 360MHz....yet....and may not be able to on the current rev of the chip (1.0) that is currently being sold in dev boards.
 
For what it is worth, I also purchased ESP32-P4 and actually tested on my own and it runs circles around previous S3 model even at current 360MHz. But quite obviously it is slower than Teensy.
 

Attachments

  • IMG_20260113_192557774_HDR.jpg
    IMG_20260113_192557774_HDR.jpg
    178 KB · Views: 42
Last edited:
[...hoping my three favorite suppliers make-up someday]

In a future freensy (or teensy;) I'd like to see Teensy 4.1-like performance with the DSP instruction set, even more memory, and a debugger port (sorry, Paul --- I am so tired of printf) option or variation, and a WiFi variation.

JimC
 
For my part, I'm saddened by this but not totally surprised. Like probably many of you, I've been in this space for a long time, at least since the Teensy 2.0 era. I've had various dealings with Adafruit over the years. By and large, Limor seems like a decent lady. Phil, well, he seems a little more difficult but I've only really had one bad interaction with Adafruit over the years. Not sure what to think of the feud but it's not really any of my business. I'm fine with still buying things from SparkFun, and AF too for things they stock.

I really don't understand the AF board where they want to make something completely not a teensy and call it a teensy. Seems odd. If they had stuck with the same types of processors that might have made more sense. If they would allow for JTAG that would have been really awesome. I've mentioned before how I would have liked to see JTAG and I think it should be possible for PJRC to add it since their locked bootloader chip is hooked to JTAG permanently. So, that's one feature I miss. Otherwise, I'm perfectly happy with the Teensy MicroMod and 4.1 boards I use. They're all very nice and I don't see a reason not to stick with them.

I've always been of the opinion not to defecate where you eat. I certainly could make my own teensy compatible boards and quit buying so many MicroMod chips but why would I do that? I want to support the people who actually got it all off the ground, built the hardware, built the software. There's no reason to undercut people who are only trying to make good products for the community.
 
Like others have pointed out the reason to use a Teensy is the power. I love the Pico2 / RP2350 but it can barely keep up with both cores overclocked and critically it lacks a 64bit FPU.

The 64bit FPU is the reason I use the Teensy. The closed source bootloader (which also blocks real debuggers) and micro USB port are not worth putting up with otherwise.

There’s no sense making a “Teensy compatible” board without equivalent compute power. I can put all the pins in the right places myself.

Paul / PJRC - please update your board with a USB-C port and either open source the bootloader or enable real debugging pass through. It’s a great product but those two issues have a lot of us trying to find a replacement. This drama adds to the sour taste, I couldn’t care less who did what. It looks bad on you and the product because it makes the supply chain unstable.
 
beermat said:
Thanks to Paul for letting this play out, although he must be itching to lock this, as it isn't very productive.
Click to expand...

Indeed most other forums would have locked this thread. I'm not sure we've made the right decision, but for better or worse we're letting this play out as long as it stays mostly civil.

Even more difficult (for me) has been resisting the urge to publicly comment on this situation, to "tell PJRC's side of the story". We may make a public statement that at some point. Maybe, maybe not. Robin and I have discussed it and we have a lot of mixed feelings. For now, I want everyone to know I am reading all these messages, PJRC is allowing this conversation to continue on our forum, but at least for now I'm intentionally holding my tongue regarding my own opinion on this drama.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top