If you are an electronic engineer or someone who has to do with designing electronic projects, you would know how the heck of a job choosing development boards is. Provided with the wide variety of development boards available in the market, you will have to look closely at the specifications of some development boards to choose from. If you are interested in buying a new development board, have a look at this product https://www.geniatech.com/product/db3590/ from Geniatech.
But before getting down to all the Important considerations you need to keep in mind before finalizing a development board for your project, let’s first see what development boards are and what they are used for:
Development Boards: What Are They and What Are They Used For?
Typically speaking, a development board is a small circuit board that contains a series of microprocessors, microcontrollers, or a combination of both. These components constitute necessary software and hardware for the sake of programming and design. The primary purpose of these development boards is to create learning apparatus among software students. These boards are used in the testing and debugging stages of different models. Also, these development boards have some complex industrial applications. Whenever an electronic device is designed, these development boards are used in its prototype to test its feasibility.
Things to Consider While Choosing a Development Board
– Types of Development Boards
You cannot settle for the best development board until you finally decide what type you are looking for. Depending upon their strengths and specifications, development boards come in various types; Arduino Uno, Mega, Adafruit, SparkFun. Then there are single development boards like Nvidia, Qualcomm, Realtek, Samsung, etc.
– Language & Community
The second important factor should be your operating system choice and programming language. Though most development boards support C and C++, several other programming languages and IDE’s can also be used to create a more exciting development board.
– The Specs
The third and probably the most necessary consideration is the specifications. This you can determine from the project you are up to. Keep in mind that the bigger is not always better for development boards. And secondly, as more specifications will add on, the price will also be multiplied.
The list of top specifications to look for in your development board is as follows:
- CPU Clock Speed: Speed has a variable effect on the performance of your development board. So, compare the CPU clock speed of different board families before settling for one.
- Memory (RAM): Going for a development board with more RAM will ring you with several virtues. Memory impacts the data processing speed. So, the more memory, the faster would be your development board.
- Graphical Processing Unit (GPU): Processing videos without bogging and buffering requires choosing development boards with better graphical processing units (GPU).
- Other necessary specifications include GPIO Pins, Storage Space, and Analog Pins.
Conclusion
Development boards are the basic building unit of complex electronic systems and are used in various industries today. The availability of a variety of custom and standard development boards makes it very difficult for newbies to choose from. Though your project decides more than anything the type of development boards to be used, the popular ones indeed do have an advantage. Considering all the above factors, along with the future expansion and upgrades, you should be able to choose the right development board for your project.
