Steve's Things

The Olimex PIC32-Pnguino with it's large DIP form factor

Specs:

• Manufactured by Olimex
• Price ~$25 USD
• Pic32MX440F256H 32 bit Microchip MCU
• 256K of Flash, 32K of RAM
• Built in microSD slot
• Operating at 80 Mhz
• USB On-the-go
• Geared for Pinguino IDE

First Thoughts:

I haven’t used this product very extensively yet so some shortcomings are awesome points may be missed. I have played with it for a couple of days though and read through most of the libraries and documentation. This product is from Olimex in Bulgaria and to be honest, I’m a bit of a fan of Olimex. Olimex has built some interesting devices such as the DuinoMite and you can really tell that these guys really like what they do. They spend the time and effort to make the boards as good as possible.

Anyways, some thoughts about this board. It’s a pretty neat little board for both prototyping and perhaps even fitting it in to a product. It has a small form factor and would happily fit into a larger board for use in a larger product. The built in microSD port and the USB otg interface allows for some neat things to be made. The pinguino IDE isn’t too bad either. The libraries are reasonably complete and the device works quite reliably with the software as I encountered no bugs or glitches and programs worked as expected.

Pros:

• Small form factor
• .1 dip pinout which is good for breadboarding
• Good price for a 32 bit device like this
• Well built
• UEXT port for other Olimex peripherals is a nice choice
• Fast!

Cons:

• Uses small ICSP port which you must buy from Olimex. I know it’s done for size and not simply to sell a cable but it’s still a bit of a drag.
• DIP width is too wide to fit on a single breadboard, you’ll need to use two breadboards and straddle it over them.
• UEXT connector is taller than everything else on the board. Not a huge issue but most people won’t use the UEXT connector and the header could interfere inside an enclosure.
• like with most 32 bit processors, the pins are not 5V. some of the pins may be 5V tolerant but this simply comes with the territory.

Final Thoughts:

I like the stuff that Olimex builds. They give a shit about what they make and it shows. This type of device is pretty good for almost anyone with a reasonable amount of skill wishing to prototype anything you would normally do with an Arduino. For the price, you can’t beat these guys. In order to get ahold of one you can go through Mouser or look at the Ebay distributor (olimexery). Olimex themselves seems to sell it but they don’t seem to have a slick store setup to do purchasing.