Many students who are new to the electronics industry, or engineers just starting out, often face the question of how to choose an ARM development board. The author shares personal experiences to provide insights on “how to choose an ARM development board”.

Starting Out

I once thought I was smart, but later realized I was just a spoon!

A rural kid, diligent and eager to learn, attending an ordinary 211 university in the capital, majoring in communications. A few years ago, communication engineering was a very popular major, but people from small towns were often behind in information and ended up in big pitfalls. In my freshman year, I spoke with a senior, and the only requirement for large companies like Huawei and Datang to recruit communication engineering graduates was “male” and “normal graduation”! Now, it’s very difficult to find a pure communication-related job after graduation; many courses in school are almost useless in the job market, like digital signal processing and high-frequency circuits, and we are advised to seek other paths. Due to financial reasons, I couldn’t pursue a master’s degree and needed to resolve material issues quickly.

At that time, I had two paths in front of me: compete with computer science and software engineering students for jobs, or compete with automation and electronics majors for jobs!

Since the coursework for communication engineering is almost the same as that for automation and electronics, and I could self-learn computer programming, after “careful consideration”, I decided to combine both, mastering both software and hardware! The only choice was the embedded industry. Because the communication process involves learning some hardware courses, such as analog circuits and digital circuits, I would also be exposed to programming knowledge, with C language being the foundational course, followed by VHDL and MATLAB, which I also needed to use. I didn’t want to learn things that I wouldn’t eventually use (it was so pure back then).

While my classmates played games every day, I started planning for the future, and I admired myself for that.

Hitting a Wall is Inevitable

To enter the embedded industry, one generally needs to start with the 8051 microcontroller. I picked the cheapest one on an online shopping platform and spent a month getting it to work, figuring out things like GPIO lighting, matrices, displays, UART, I2C, etc. Most people stop here, thinking they can find a job after graduation. Maybe twenty years ago, you would have been considered a high-tech talent, but think about it: something you can learn in a month isn’t exactly high tech. With so many university graduates every year, where is your competitiveness?

So I continued to push forward! Go for it, young man!

It’s not that I wasn’t hardworking enough; it’s just that society is too complicated!

The first month went smoothly, but for the next three years, I experienced a situation where “three years of skills developed, yet no application for them”.

I bought several 2440 and 210 development boards and practiced for over two years. Looking back, I felt so pitiful; why didn’t someone guide me (it’s so wonderful to have someone guide you and give you direction when you’re moving forward with all your heart)!

Real Experiences

Let me share my experiences in detail.

At that time, every shop selling 2440 on the online platform offered different unique tutorials. I thought to myself, I want to buy ten!

I initially bought a board starting with ‘y’, an old brand with rich materials and relatively cheap. Coming from the world of microcontrollers, seeing something that could run an operating system with a graphical interface suddenly made me feel completely different; I could only describe it with two words: “Wow, wow”. The y series development board came with a built-in WinCE system, which required C++ or C#. Well, since my foundation wasn’t strong, I had to learn (there’s nothing wrong with learning programming languages). After learning the language, I started from the basics of the WinCE architecture, the various APIs of WinCE. This experience was really dark; the WinCE architecture is extremely complex. Of course, if it’s a simple application or if you’re not studying too deeply, it’s not too difficult. I memorized various WinCE APIs daily, finally became proficient, and wrote a few small programs.

Then I heard that the t series development board did very well with Qtopia, so I thought I should learn from the best materials! Hundreds of dollars gone, but Qtopia is indeed great, and its open-source level is higher than WinCE. It’s said there’s a free version for product applications, unlike WinCE, which requires licensing fees. The Qtopia interface is excellent, no doubt about it, with a clear structure and much easier to learn than WinCE. I then started learning on Qtopia, and after half a year, I was still struggling with the architecture, graphical UI, driver calls, etc.!

Next was the f series, which supposedly introduced how to write in the console. Seeing the console print various graphics and even play Tetris and Snake, I immediately bought it without hesitation! Then came the j series, which was said to do well on bare metal and had tutorials for system porting; it looked very high-end. Okay, buy, buy, buy! Moreover, the tutorials for this board also needed to be purchased! This development board taught me a life lesson: expensive doesn’t mean good, and cheap and free can often be better. Later, I bought the 210 board and learned Android 2.0!

These are the boards I can remember!

But the initial direction led me down an irreversible path! I bought several 2440 development boards in total, and the money spent could have covered a training class; thinking about it makes me feel heartbroken. At that time, I did various part-time jobs like handing out flyers, working as a waiter, and tutoring, which was so hard. Although it doesn’t seem like much now, earning that money back then was not easy!

Realization

There was a moment when millions of alpacas ran through my heart. Where’s my knife? Where’s my knife?

In the second semester of my junior year, I had to face the job search problem. I went to look at recruitment requirements for the first time and gathered some information by talking with fellow townsmen and graduated seniors! Suddenly, I was dumbfounded!

WinCE is completely useless! It’s an outdated technology! I used to think Microsoft was reliable, but I found out that whatever a company does is a business act. As fewer people use WinCE, it naturally stopped being updated, and when it stopped being maintained, the number of companies using it decreased. As fewer companies used it, newcomers couldn’t enter, and old-timers began to transition!

The most painful pain is forgiveness, the darkest black is despair!

Qtopia is completely useless! This was clearly stated in the x degree encyclopedia; maintenance and updates stopped in 2009. Now, the embedded field uses Linux-Qt, also known as QtE! Everything I learned about graphical interfaces and so on is now useless! A special reminder: be sure to distinguish between Qtopia and QtE! QtE is still widely used now, but do not ever learn Qtopia!

The promises you made were actually lies; how could I have believed you all this time!

Where’s that console printing thing? Well, let’s not talk about it, it’s all tears! Are you kidding me?

Seeking the area of psychological shadow!

Porting? Creating an operating system? That’s just a gimmick. After working for many years, I realized that this should be called BSP development. All operating systems are definitely launched by huge companies, not something some amazing teacher can accomplish independently~ with millions to tens of millions of lines of code, can those amazing teachers produce it? Just reading it would take several lifetimes! Let them keep bragging; after all, they don’t pay taxes.

Millions of alpacas roared through my heart!

What about Android 2.0? Useless! Android underwent drastic changes from 1.0 to 4.0, and it was only at 4.0 that Android was widely applied to smartphones. Android 2.0 can go to hell!

Where’s my knife? Where’s my knife? Killing is not a crime!

I always thought I was a different kind of person, only to realize later that the life most people pursue is actually the most valuable.

Seeing my classmates each have their own plans—some have connections at home and don’t have to worry, some are taking over family businesses, some want to pursue a master’s degree and enter research institutes, some want to become civil servants, and some believe they can do sales… Similar to me, those preparing to engage in technology began to study Android and iOS or get into upper-level programming, while others started learning how to layout and do hardware design.

Well, I had to start over; isn’t it just Android changing versions? Learn, learn, learn! So I quietly started learning Android, and apart from hardware, almost nothing I learned before was useful.

After six months of intensive study, I finally found a job that was somewhat suitable! The rest of the story isn’t much to say; now I work in embedded Android.

Bonus: How to Identify Bad Merchants

Now, combining the current development of embedded systems, I want to share how to identify bad merchants!

After years of development in embedded systems, many technologies have been eliminated, and many new technologies have emerged. Some have survived the wave, while others have disappeared. The technologies that have been eliminated have left a lot of shadows and become the biggest obstacles for beginners in embedded systems.

Remember the following points (a bit radical, but heartfelt words):

Anyone claiming to teach Android porting, Linux, or similar operating systems should be ignored! That’s something hundreds of people do together.

Anyone with WinCE prominently featured on their page should be ignored! WinCE doesn’t support multi-core; it died many years ago!

Anyone featuring Qtopia prominently on their page should be ignored! That thing died seven years ago; who are they trying to fool?

Anyone mentioning Android 1.0, 2.0, or 3.0 on their page should be ignored! Those things have never been widely used!

Anyone with large-scale bare-metal video tutorials should be ignored! Unless you have money to waste and want to play around, or you plan to work with microcontrollers forever (which is also a life choice). Additionally, during student days, I thought I was independent and had independent thoughts. In reality, it’s easy to idolize someone; if a picture is posted on an online shopping platform claiming a bestseller, you’d worship them immensely. Even if you idolize someone, it’s actually the big team behind them you should admire, not just one person! So-called famous teachers should be ignored!

Over the years, I’ve been lurking in these groups and found that most of those who bought those boards at the same time as I did have not been able to find work as embedded engineers, if we don’t count microcontroller engineers (which is too simple and has low pay)! I believe this is closely related to the malicious promotion of these bad merchants!

Gustave Le Bon described human collective behavior as “the crowd”, and this is perfectly applicable in this context. A misguided promotion leads others to follow suit, damaging a large number of merchants, while buyers don’t inform newcomers of their failures, fearing it would make them look foolish! Ultimately, the ones hurt are the “crowd”—poor science and engineering boys.

Children of the ivory tower, before spending money to learn, take a look at recruitment requirements; which jobs are in high demand, urgently hiring, and offering good salaries—go learn those! After all, the market decides everything, not some teacher!

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On the road of electronics, let’s walk together!