My wish list teensy

DaQue

Well-known member
Teensy 3.2 like board in a MKT1000 type configuration. WiFi and lipo support stuck on one end. Barring that a board that stacks with both on it.
 
What's "MKT1000"?

A quick google search is turning up some sort of automotive tire stand (and all sorts of other unrelated stuff), and the "mktechnologies" website isn't responding.

mkt1000.jpeg
 
Oh, now I see. :)

I guess this might be a time to discuss MRK vs Feather form factor....

My problem with the feather form factor is it tends to be least common denominator, i.e. , one SPI port, one I2C port, one serial port, one DAC. Sure, it is useful for hooking up feather wings that solve some problems, but like Arduino shields, it can limit the complexity of the design. And the Teensy adapter makes it interesting to mount a 3.5/3.6 due to the longer form factor.

In terms of the Teensy form factor, I really wish there was an ON/OFF switch on the chip and it would be nice to have JST connector and support for charging from the USB to a lipo battery. Yeah, there are ways to do it, but it would be nice to have straight out of the box. The feather adapter for Teensy gives you the charging but it doesn't give you the on/off switch. The Pesky Products lipo charger can be used, but it does limit your flexibility with stacking shields.
 
Regarding switches and lipo, as long as it it doesn't change the size or increase the cost! The challenge Paul has I'm sure is he can't satisfy everyone. In general, I think people would rather have to add what they need instead of deal with what they don't. The minimalism of the Teensy design is what set's it apart from most other boards IMHO.
 
First the obvious, Teensy 3.x isn't going to change. Well, expect I might slightly alter LC & 3.2 to use the stronger USB connector we started using on 3.5 & 3.6. Even that is unlikely, but if anything changes, the only thing you can expect to ever happen on the 3.x hardware is the USB connector.

For Teensy 4.x, the current plan (which still could change) is looking like a first board in the 3.2 form factor (1.4 by 0.7 inch) with 4 power pins and 24 signals on the breadboard-friendly outside edge, and maybe more signals on bottom-side pads.

What the second 4.x board might be is still undecided. I've been considering the Feather & MKR form factors, or some sort of extension of those. Neither brings out many pins, and of course I want to give you access to *many* more pins. A 2nd larger & (probably) more expensive board would have a more powerful chip which hasn't been announced yet. Anything I might know about such a chip would be under NDA, so I'm not going to talk a lot more on this. But I am listening, and this is the best time to suggest possible future form factors.
 
Regarding switches and lipo, as long as it it doesn't change the size or increase the cost! The challenge Paul has I'm sure is he can't satisfy everyone. In general, I think people would rather have to add what they need instead of deal with what they don't. The minimalism of the Teensy design is what set's it apart from most other boards IMHO.

Oh sure, I realize the challenges Paul must have faced and every thing is a trade-off. I tend to use Teensy in props, and it is better to have an on-board switch to turn the unit on/off, then string wires which typically will break at just the wrong time, etc. But it isn't the end of the world if there isn't a switch.

When I'm using something with neopixels or sounds, it is useful to have a quick on/off button. I can (and sometimes do) put the on/off button on the battery, but this means I need to modify every lipo battery to have an on/off switch.

If VUSB had been brought out to the main row of pins (moving either analog ground or A9 to the inner row) adjacent to VIN, you could simply solder a on-off switch between the two. But with VUSB being in the inner row, and not adjacent to VIN makes it slightly harder.

For a lot of setups that I do, the best would be to have VUSB, VIN, regular ground, and 3.3v all together. Then you could use regular female headers to make a quick connection off board to either supply regulated power (3.3v + ground), normal power (VIN + ground) via 2 pin connection. But this would have forced A9, A8, and AGND to the center pins.

In terms of the feather design, there is an enable pin (pin 5 on the right). Unfortunately, in the Teensy feather adapter, they don't use it. Even if the enable pin on the Teensy/feather adapter had only worked for the battery and not USB, it would have been useful.
 
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it is better to have an on-board switch to turn the unit on/off

How about a pin to connect a pushbutton for on/off? When off, pressing the button turns on the power. When on, holding it for 4+ seconds turns off the power. Or software can initiate the power off.

But in the off state, everything really is off (except minimal on/off circuitry and the RTC) and the only way to turn back on is pressing the button.
 
FWIW: apart from some brief development time, all my use cases for Teensy have been 24/7 type applications, for which I want to minimize the possibility that the device gets turned off by accident (eg. if it gets slightly bumped, etc). Paul's suggestion about a pin for a pushbutton sounds fine (as long as it has a sensible pullup/pulldown so it isn't a really high-impedance input, but I'm sure he would do the right thing there).
 
For me (a hobbyist who just does it for the fun of it...)

Yes at times, a power switch might be nice, But for the most part, if the Teensy is part of a board, often there is other stuff and I have a switch that turns off the power to the whole thing...
Example robot control board, where I have a 3S lipo battery to control the servos and somewhere will be a DC/DC converter down to some reasonable voltage to pass to Teensy. Here I switch off power coming out of the LIPO...

Currently with most of these boards, if the option is for an external dumb switch (power/no power), don't we have the option of simply putting a switch between VUSB and VIN (assuming you cut the trace that connects them)?

But I do like the idea of the smarter switch like Paul mentioned, some of my other boards like UP boards have something like that.

Talking about buttons, though, I personally wish that the program button was a combination program/reset button. That is if I press it quickly, than it simply resets the board, if I hold in the button for some amount of time, then go into program mode... I have had boards like this. Alternatively some boards have one or more user buttons on them, and if you hold one of the buttons in while the board is powering on (or reset button is pressed), it forces it into program mode... But...
 
How about a pin to connect a pushbutton for on/off? When off, pressing the button turns on the power. When on, holding it for 4+ seconds turns off the power. Or software can initiate the power off.

But in the off state, everything really is off (except minimal on/off circuitry and the RTC) and the only way to turn back on is pressing the button.

Yep that would work.
 
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How about a pin to connect a pushbutton for on/off? When off, pressing the button turns on the power. When on, holding it for 4+ seconds turns off the power. Or software can initiate the power off.

But in the off state, everything really is off (except minimal on/off circuitry and the RTC) and the only way to turn back on is pressing the button.

+1 for that great idea!
 
+1 for that great idea!

+1 for the idea, and it being a great idea. Much better than a breakable switch that would be in the wrong spot taking up too much real estate. Would it get a corresponding GND pin point too?

re:KurtE :: The Program button already has the 15s long press behavior to be wary of. It would be great to have a 'factory' way (beyond the pin/pad aftermarket) to reset it though - after an accidental tap to Program mode it takes alternate method to restart it. Maybe a double press in some fashion to bypass/exit Program mode and reset MCU to restart?
 
I made a typo and as was suggested I meant to say MKR1000. It's been to long I can.t fix the post. I never expected another version of the LC or 3.x boards but as something to consider fora future Teensy. Maybe I should just start looking for a stacking board for the 3.6 with the stuff I want on it. I do agree the feather boards kind of limit your choices a lot. I have a Teensy in one and the LCD display feather board too.
 
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First the obvious, Teensy 3.x isn't going to change. Well, expect I might slightly alter LC & 3.2 to use the stronger USB connector we started using on 3.5 & 3.6. Even that is unlikely, but if anything changes, the only thing you can expect to ever happen on the 3.x hardware is the USB connector.

For Teensy 4.x, the current plan (which still could change) is looking like a first board in the 3.2 form factor (1.4 by 0.7 inch) with 4 power pins and 24 signals on the breadboard-friendly outside edge, and maybe more signals on bottom-side pads.

What the second 4.x board might be is still undecided. I've been considering the Feather & MKR form factors, or some sort of extension of those. Neither brings out many pins, and of course I want to give you access to *many* more pins. A 2nd larger & (probably) more expensive board would have a more powerful chip which hasn't been announced yet. Anything I might know about such a chip would be under NDA, so I'm not going to talk a lot more on this. But I am listening, and this is the best time to suggest possible future form factors.

Hey Paul, with the Teensy 4.x initially coming out in a Teensy 3.2 form factor, that leaves the Teensy 3.5 and 3.6 as the odd boards out. Any plans to ever release versions of those in the 3.2 form factor as well?
 
I personally would love to get some boards made on the Teensy design philosophy -- that break out ALL the IO. Right now, I'm developing a big project and looking at something like this for the simplicity of board design: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Due-Core-S...216587?hash=item4b33e55c4b:g:9BMAAOSwh1haE~cJ

But I would MUCH rather have it from PJRC and with a more modern, better supported processor. Heck, I'd be REALLY happy with the MK66FX1M0VMD18 with all the IO (~100 pins!) broken out and a USB connector (specific form factor is not an issue for me). I'm curious if anybody else has expressed interest in more IO.
 
I personally would love to get some boards made on the Teensy design philosophy -- that break out ALL the IO. Right now, I'm developing a big project and looking at something like this for the simplicity of board design: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Due-Core-S...216587?hash=item4b33e55c4b:g:9BMAAOSwh1haE~cJ

But I would MUCH rather have it from PJRC and with a more modern, better supported processor. Heck, I'd be REALLY happy with the MK66FX1M0VMD18 with all the IO (~100 pins!) broken out and a USB connector (specific form factor is not an issue for me). I'm curious if anybody else has expressed interest in more IO.

Yes, I was considering this as a 30x30 mm form factor with high density headers (maybe a couple of Hirose like Intel Edison):
https://forum.pjrc.com/threads/53225-Teensy-3-6-quot-Pro-quot-Feedback

The original thought was packing a bunch of additional stuff with the Teensy chip, but the price rises quickly. I eventually settled on an idea of stacking high density headers to keep the price around $20 - $30 for each module. I'm just not sure if there's enough of a market to pursue it.
 
Very good! I'd glanced over your thread, but wasn't looking for something as complex as your initial aim. At $20-30 for a simple board, it would definitely be feasible for a lot of development projects. I'm under pressure to get started on mine, but if you or Paul print a breakout like that soon, I would certainly want to port my code/boards.
 
On brtaylor's linked thread I linked to the PJRC T_3.6 ref board. That is about UNO sized and only breaks out the T_3.6 pins - to a T_3.6 footprint - and to both edges - like he shipped in his Beta boards. That is a 2 layer board - so is very busily routed to move those lines. Though might offer a way to daylight more/all the pins - they would of course not have pre-#defined .h nomenclature or support for the added pins in the IDE.
 
How about a pin to connect a pushbutton for on/off? When off, pressing the button turns on the power. When on, holding it for 4+ seconds turns off the power. Or software can initiate the power off.

But in the off state, everything really is off (except minimal on/off circuitry and the RTC) and the only way to turn back on is pressing the button.

This is the type of on/off I'd like to see. I usually see it implemented as press to turn on. Short press to turn off by normal software control, long press to force off now. Yep, I remembered reading about some support for power control and wakeup: For the T4 MCU it seams there is much much more support for power control: Pg 429 Table 10-1. Wakeup via RTC when in SNVS level shutdown. Section 10.5 ONOFF (Button) + 10.6 WAKEUP PIN looks interesting. Looks like if the right PMIC is used to power the T4, then the CPU can control it. Including to wake up by the SRTC roll over or LP Time Alarm.
 
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