Microcontroller development on ARM Chromebook

Question

I have an ARM Chrombook and would like to use it to program a microcontroller. If possible I want to keep the Chromebook in normal (not "developer") mode.

This presents two problems:

1. The Chromebook currently only supports HID and mass-storage USB profiles, but most microcontrollers are programmed using old-school serial (or on-the-micro usb-serial conversion).
2. The Chromebook doesn't have a way to compile code (can't install GCC).

So far I have found mbed which looks like it would work but is beyond my budget.

Number 1 is more of an annoyance because if it comes down to it I could always use the TRRS headphone/mic jack as a serial TX/RX port. The real problem is #2. I have had zero luck finding a (free/cheap) fully online compiler that exports hex files.

Does some online GCC toolchain equivalent exist, or am I stuck with doing my development on a desktop computer?

Thanks!

[edit] I tried using a USB-serial adapter (Digi Edgeport/8) and ChromeOS did not recognize it.

Answer 1

Your choice of development platform is going to be heavily restricted by the tools available. For the more niche uControllers, you might find there is little choice. One thing is for sure, none of the tool vendors are going to be remotely interested in supported Chromebooks as a distinct platform as it's a minuscule proportion of an already small market. Likewise, web-service based tools are also highly niche, and I'm hard pressed to understand why anybody would want them.

Your best bet is to install Linux - provided the development tools you want to use run under it. GCC certainly can, but for proprietary tools it's likely to have to be some flavour of Windows - and most likely XP.

The lack of serial port is easily overcome with a USB-Serial dongle. Avoid dongles built on the PL2303 chipset where the unholy trinity of buggy drivers, silicon and possibly even devices is common. Devices built on the FTDI chipset seem much more reliable, but are more expensive. Using TRRS as a serial port sound like a nightmare: remember the console interface is the way you're going to debug your system - you need to trust that it works reliably.

Answer 2

If you are willing to use Javascript then you have a out-of-the-box solution using Espruino http://www.espruino.com/ which supports a number of different ARM M3-Cortex boards and may possbily do so for some higher end AVRs in the future. Espruino in fact has a Chrome packaged App as its only development environment and so is fully functional even when offline.

Answer 3

Unfortunately, on your chromebook, usb serial is easier said than done. It seems Chrubuntu doesn't have the necessary modules compiled (I'm desperately looking for a way of achieving this) so your chromebook might be a total no-go on this front.