Metro Board
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- Rrww57
- Posts: 15
- Joined: Thu Aug 11, 2022 4:24 pm
Metro Board
I’m new and trying to understand different boards. Is the Metro 328 an actual microcomputer or must some other feather/hat/board/etc. need to be added in order to do processing. I’m asking because of the slow speeds that I see in the Metro specs … so much slower than I see on Pi’s, even the Zero. Thanks for your help.
- dastels
- Posts: 15674
- Joined: Tue Oct 20, 2015 3:22 pm
Re: Metro Board
The Metro 328 is essentially the same as an Arduino UNO. It uses an ATmega328 MCU with is 8bit, slow, with very little memory (flash or RAM). It's not a very good choice unless you need something UNO compatible.
Get something with at least a SAMD21 (aka M0) if you plan to use C++ or a SAMD51 (aka M4) if you want to use CircuitPython. And there are many possibilities beyond those. Each Metro, Feather, ItsyBitsy, QyPy, etc board are processing boards to which you add sensors and such as required.
Dave
Get something with at least a SAMD21 (aka M0) if you plan to use C++ or a SAMD51 (aka M4) if you want to use CircuitPython. And there are many possibilities beyond those. Each Metro, Feather, ItsyBitsy, QyPy, etc board are processing boards to which you add sensors and such as required.
Dave
- westfw
- Posts: 2008
- Joined: Fri Apr 27, 2007 1:01 pm
Re: Metro Board
It's an actual "microcontroller."
Microcontrollers tends to be much smaller and slower that the "microprocessors" that power most of the boards we call "microcomputers", they usually lack the fancier peripherals (like a camera or display interface), and they tend to have much less memory (kilobytes to (low) megabytes rather than gigabytes.
You can still do a lot with a microcontroller board like a Metro, but you can't just connect it to a screen and a keyboard and be up and running.
Remember that the original IBM PC only ran at 4.77 MHz, and the original Mac only about 8MHz.
It used to be that microcontrollers and microcontroller boards were significantly less expensive than microprocessor or microcomputer class boards, but the Raspberry Pi -class of boards has confused that a bit. I think it's difficult to manufacture a "board-level" product for a cost less than $25 or so, unless you produce in huge volumes (like the Raspberry Pi people.)
Microcontrollers tends to be much smaller and slower that the "microprocessors" that power most of the boards we call "microcomputers", they usually lack the fancier peripherals (like a camera or display interface), and they tend to have much less memory (kilobytes to (low) megabytes rather than gigabytes.
You can still do a lot with a microcontroller board like a Metro, but you can't just connect it to a screen and a keyboard and be up and running.
Remember that the original IBM PC only ran at 4.77 MHz, and the original Mac only about 8MHz.
It used to be that microcontrollers and microcontroller boards were significantly less expensive than microprocessor or microcomputer class boards, but the Raspberry Pi -class of boards has confused that a bit. I think it's difficult to manufacture a "board-level" product for a cost less than $25 or so, unless you produce in huge volumes (like the Raspberry Pi people.)
- Rrww57
- Posts: 15
- Joined: Thu Aug 11, 2022 4:24 pm
Re: Metro Board
Just wanted to thank you for your replay last month … I greatly appreciate when you take the time to help.
Please be positive and constructive with your questions and comments.