What is ARMmbed?
ARMmbed is a platform and operating system for internet-connected devices based on 32-bit ARM Cortex-M microcontrollers. Such devices are also known as Internet of Things (IoT) devices. The project is collaboratively developed by ARM and its technology partners and is an ecosystem of open source code, products and services to assist in the rapid development of Arm-based embedded systems. All the information regarding ARMmbed can be found at www.mbed.com/en.
The Compiler
Applications for the mbed platform can be developed using the mbed online IDE, a free online code editor and compiler in which the code is written and compiled within a web browser, and compiled on the cloud using the ARMCC C/C++ compiler. The mbed IDE provides private workspaces with ability to import, export, and share code with distributed Mercurial version control, and it can be used also for code documentation generation. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mbed]
Hardware Platforms
One of the ideas with ARMmbed is to develop hardware independent code which could be ported to different platforms. Many of the code examples are still based on the original mbed platform (mbed NXP LPC1768), but many other boards from different vendors are now supported (developer.mbed.org/platforms) and the list keeps growing.
What will be covered on the controlsoft.mandela.ac.za site?
We want to encourage students to make use of the online services, handbook, cookbook, community of software developers, and open source code on the ARMmbed Developer website (developer.mbed.org). Having said that, we would also like to fast-track students with the development process by covering the following topics on this site:
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Getting started
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Requirements
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Using the Online IDE
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STM32F4-Discovery Examples
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STM32F429-Discovery Examples (soon...)