$1 ARMS AND $20 DEVELOPMENT KITS.

The article presents information on low-cost microcontrollers including the Stellaris from Luminary Micro Inc. and the eZ430-F2013 from Texas Instruments Inc. The 32-bit Cortex M3 ARM architecture of Stellaris has become a dominant factor in microcontroller design. Moreover, Luminary Micro's EKK-LM3S811 Evaluation Kit incorporates a JTAG emulator that can be used with off-board debugging. Texas Instrument's eZ430-F2013 development kit has a USB stick that includes a USB-based hardware debugger that can be used with target systems. Irrespective of the low cost of these development tools, the most impressive thing about the products is the good quality of their hardware and software.