A couple of questions before I buy my first Teensy.

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jonathonpm

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Hi,

I am a complete newbie so excuse me if I say anything to stupid. I have a couple of questions before I buy my first teensy.

As a newbie what will a Teensy 3.0 allow me to do that a ++2.0 wont? Will I still be able to use the same tutorials out there?

My aim (after experimenting and learning) from using I am wanting to get started on a pet project involving transferring data from one mini sd card to another, is this possible using the teensy?

Thanks for any help
 
The Teensy 3.0 has a significantly faster processor, native 32 bit and up to 96 MHz clock rate. Since it is a different architecture (ARM instead of Atmel AVR) you need a software compatibility layer to make existing Arduino libraries work as-is. This is not yet complete; some libraries work OK and some which use specific AVR hardware directly, do not (yet) work. Also, T3.0 runs at 3.3V instead of 5 V, and T2.0++ has more I/O pins if that's relevant.

To transfer data from one SD card to another you would use the SPI bus with two independent chip selects. Teensy 3.0 can do this, as can T2.0, T2.0++ and any Arduino. Teensy 3.0 can do it faster than AVR-based Arduino chips, and you don't need a 3-5V level translator since the cpu already is running at 3.3 V.

Note- if you wanted even faster SD copying speeds, you could use a Raspberry Pi with two USB SD card readers. But that would be bigger and take quite a bit more power to run, eg. if you want to work from batteries.
 
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I'm sure the goal is for parity: that all the libraries work on either. This is a significant effort and it will be some time before parity is achieved. This can be a bit frustrating right now because there isn't a really a definitive list of what works and doesn't and developing such a list is non trivial. Some libraries are pure C code and don't access registers and so will work directly. Some libraries will need to be completely rewritten. We won't really know until they are tried. So if you have a specific goal in mind covered by one the existing libraries, the teensy 2 might be easier right this minute.

That said, if you want to learn about how things work under the hood, I think the 3.0 will be a much better choice. The ARM chip will be around for quite some time, and the assembly instruction set, the memory space layout, etc are all shared by the processor in your phone and your tablet and probably everything except your desktop. It's also vastly more powerful.

Personally, diving into the source and figuring out what's working and what isn't has been really rewarding (and difficult). I think I understand how computers work much better since getting my teensy 3.

Hope this helps,

-c
 
I believe I just answered this same question in email. Regarding the tutorials.....


The tutorials were written with 2.0, so your path of least resistance would be to go with 2.0.

I'm going to retest the tutorials with 3.0 soon. I believe everything should work, except the 3.3 volt output probably is not enough to turn on the blue and green LEDs. We'll probably change the tutorial to a different LED in a month. But right now, the tutorials haven't been carefully checked with 3.0.
 
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