Top Development Boards for IoT: A Comprehensive Review

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Source: Huawei Developer Community

Edited by: strongerHuang

In recent years, the rapid development of the Internet of Things (IoT) has been felt by everyone.

It is well known that the underlying boards (or development boards) are the smart devices in the perception layer of the IoT architecture. These devices typically consist of chips, communication modules, and operating systems. Of course, different development boards may have certain differences in functionality and usage.

Today, we have compiled a super “hard” article: A Review of Commonly Used IoT Development Boards!

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1. Arduino Development Board

The Arduino development board is designed with the philosophy of simplicity and openness for users. It is flexible, easy to use, has a low entry threshold, and features rich interfaces, multi-functionality, and easy expansion. Therefore, it is widely used in electronic design. There are many types of Arduino development boards on the market, such as Arduino UNO/UNO R3, Arduino101/Intel Curie, Arduino Micro, Arduino Ethernet, and Intel Galileo development boards. This type of development board is very quick to get started with, simple to operate, and relatively inexpensive.

Unique Advantages:

(1) Openness: Arduino is an early open-source hardware project, and its hardware circuits and software development environment are completely open.

(2) Ease of Use: Simple to use, no additional drivers needed, uses a C-like language, with only setup and loop modules in the main function.

(3) Easy Communication: Arduino has established a relatively unified framework, with a standardized method for some low-level initializations and marked ports for digital and analog signals, making it very convenient for beginners to communicate circuits or programs.

Development Board Performance Analysis:

Below is a brief comparison of the performance of several of the aforementioned development boards. The Arduino UNO is the most common, has fewer functions, such as not being able to insert an SD card for expansion, but is the cheapest, costing only a few dollars.

Arduino101/Intel Curie may have reset issues, is more expensive, but has powerful computing performance. For the Arduino Micro development board, the low-level programming can easily encounter issues, but it is the smallest in size and can simulate keyboard and mouse functions.

Arduino Ethernet focuses on Ethernet, with a stable long-distance connection via network cable, and can store more resources with a TF card. Its initialization speed is relatively slow, affecting development speed. The Intel Galileo Gen 2 is a powerful software-based board.

To briefly introduce the Intel Galileo Gen 2 development board, it is compatible with Arduino, has a 32-bit processor, can save information to an SD card for recording, supports expansion, can communicate with data collected from the internet, has a USB host connector for using webcams, and also has an Ethernet interface for wired LAN connections, while featuring low power consumption. The working voltage is 7-15V, with 14 data pins (0-13, where pins 3, 5, 6, 9, 10, and 11 can be used for PWM output), 5 analog pins including A0-A5, and additional interfaces.

2. Bear Pi Development Board

Unlike traditional sensors, the Bear Pi development board does not have onboard sensor designs. To meet different development needs, this development board adopts a replaceable sensor expansion board design. The chip refers to the main control chip of the device, which is equipped with a low-power STM32L4 microcontroller. The communication module serves as the data transmission entry and exit. This development board supports various communication modules and adopts a replaceable communication expansion board design, including WiFi, NBiot, 2G, 4G, etc. It features a lightweight operating system, supports serial communication, 8MSPi flash, and supports TF card storage for running data, with a resolution of 240 for displaying sensor data and debugging logs. The AT-PC switch allows debugging of the communication module through a computer via serial assistant, while the right MCU mode allows the microcontroller to interact with the communication module using AT commands to transmit sensor data to the cloud.

For ease of development and debugging, as shown in the figure, this development board is equipped with version 2.1 of ST-Link, which has online debugging, drag-and-drop downloading, and virtual serial port functions. The development board has a built-in TF card slot in the upper left corner for storing running data, and on the left side, there is an 8M SPI Flash for convenient remote program upgrades.

The middle of the development board has a 240 * 240 resolution LCD screen, primarily used to display sensor data and debugging logs. Below the LCD screen is an ultra-low-power microcontroller based on STM32L431 as the main control chip of the development board. The upper right corner of the development board has a DIP switch that can be set to AT-PC mode. Through the computer’s serial assistant, AT commands can be sent to debug the communication module. In AT-MCU mode, AT commands can be sent from the MCU to interact with the communication module, transmitting collected sensor data to the cloud. Additionally, the Bear Pi IoT development board has 21 IO ports available, supporting IIC, SPI, USART, ADC, DAC, etc., to meet developers’ needs for independent development.

Main parameters are as follows:

3. STM32F429 Wildfire Development Board

The STM32F429 Wildfire Challenger Development Board has two versions, which have certain differences. The Challenger Development Board uses the Cortex-M4 series main control chip, STM32F429IGTx, with 1MB Flash, 192kB SRAM + 64CCM RAM, and a system clock of up to 180MHz. It has onboard SDRAM: 64M. SPI FLASH: 16M. EEPROM: 256 B. SD card: Micro SD card interface, supporting a maximum capacity of 32G.

The physical image is shown below:

Power Supply Method

5V Power Supply: 2 MicroUSB interfaces.

6-12V Power Supply: DC power interface, can connect to a 6-12V power adapter.

Communication Methods

This development board mainly includes Ethernet interface, 232 serial communication (with DB9 female interface), USB to serial communication, with Mini USB interface. The USB host device can read files from USB drives, USB slave devices, simulate USB drives, CAN communication, 485 communication, all with terminal blocks. Infrared communication: infrared receiver interface. Bluetooth serial. WIFI: EMW1062, can transmit video over WiFi, with onboard antenna. Audio output interface.

Other Hardware

LCD: Supports a 5-inch screen with a resolution of 800*480.

LED: 1, with one RGB full-color light.

Buttons: 3 physical buttons, 1 capacitive button.

Program Download Interface: JTAG interface, SWD interface: supports DAP, JLink, ULink, STLink downloaders.

Sensor: Temperature and humidity sensor.

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