Question about Teensy 4.1 upgrade available

[HopWorks]

Hi All,
I already have a couple Teensy 4.1's but wanted a super-sized one as a developer base unit for my bench. I found one on Amazon that includes an ethernet kit and 2 PSRAM chips - ips6404lsq 1806x8gn that supposedly add 16mb of PSRAM to the board. I would prefer octal, and these are quad, but Mouser shows them as 8 bits wide. I thought QUAD PSRAM was nibbles in width so it is a bit confusing.

I haven't dug into the PSRAM addressing of the Teensy 4.1 board yet, so have little understanding of how the added PSRAM will be addressed.

Is this something I should go after? If not, are there better options for added PSRAM?

The Ethernet kit seems to just include an ethernet port, a couple of headers, and a cable. Is that really all I need to connect this beast of a dev board to my home network?? I thought it was more involved than that.

Here are some pictures. Thanks guys in advanced for any advice I could get!

 

[thebigg]

As far as I know there are some limitations as to which psram chips are supported. I assume you have read this?

 

[PaulStoffregen]

Yes, that is one of the 4 chips that have been tested and are known to work. In fact, that picture looks like someone just copied the photo from the PJRC website.

Yes, that simple kit is all you need to connect ethernet. Teensy 4.1 has an ethernet PHY chip (the analog part of ethernet) and the ethernet mac (digital part) is built inside the main processor.

Ignore the basic summary info on Mouser's website. Info in the ApMemory datasheet and on the PJRC website is reliable.

 

[HopWorks]

Thanks for the link thebigg and the info Paul, I appreciate it.

That image has to be the same as the PJRC site. Dust or whatever markings on one of the pins matches. Honestly, if you sell something on Amazon, how hard is it to take an actual picture of the actual product before posting it? I will be checking those closely when they show up and I am glad you said something. I am sure that happens all the time too.

 

[HopWorks]

One last thing if I may, for my next (2nd) bench Teensy 4.1 ... where can I find the Winbond flash memory chip to expand that should I be OK with 8mb of PSRAM and expanded flash? Not sure why I would ever need that, but it would be nice to have those two configurations on my bench should the need arise. How much flash would it add? Can I get in on Mouser?

I am sure I missed it somewhere, and considering all the super helpful info I read through today (even on how I could fix my busted Arduino install, more later), I am sure it is covered somewhere I haven't found.

Thanks!

 

[PaulStoffregen]

Good product photography is much harder than you might imagine. The pictures you see on PJRC with white background are taken inside a small light tent with 2 super bright LED panels on its sides and a custom made white plastic base with LED (really helps control shadows and make the product look good on a web page with white background) and the camera always mounted on a tripod. Even with a high end camera and bright lights, to get a deep depth of field at odd angles that really show things in good perspective sometimes takes longer exposure times where even slight movement makes the whole thing come out blurry. Adafruit and Sparkfun have larger room-sized setups, staffed by people with actual deep knowledge of photography. I'm sure those pale in comparison to the photo studios used for major brands. PJRC's little light tent setup lives on a small 4x2 foot table which is also partly dedicated to UPS shipping documentation.

An addition flash memory chip soldered to the bottom side of Teensy 4.1 is really only well supported as filesystem using LittleFS library. While it's theoretically possible to execute code from that memory, we don't really have software support for such usage. In fact, the default MPU settings mark that memory (and all other memory not normally used for code) as NOEXEC as a proactive security measure.

 

[HopWorks]

In fact, the default MPU settings mark that memory (and all other memory not normally used for code) as NOEXEC as a proactive security measure.

Interesting. I didn't think of that, using that location to solder on a preloaded flash chip maybe to hijack code internally. I was thinking of using it for persistent LED effects patterns or whatever I come up with as a pattern/script file in a LittleFS.

white plastic base with LED (really helps control shadows and make the product look good on a web page with white background)

I have a large 12" diameter aluminum base turntable with 12 arms for lights and a camera. I imagined I would use it for 360° images shot at every 1-2° and use Flash (was current back then) to contain the images into an animation for web sites. I never finished it because cameras back then were a bit pricey, so it ended up waiting in my retirement project pile. Flash is gone but there are other means to package a web interactive 3d view now.

Adafruit and Sparkfun have larger room-sized setups, staffed by people with actual deep knowledge of photography.

I did not know that. I just figured they would outsource to a media company. I can imagine at least Adafruit would laser scan some items which would make their CAD offerings easier to make.