I do agree with you on the easy to use aspect. if you can, check out Energia. also, we've got ModKit support on the LaunchPad now. Hopefully with the partner system we're trying to enable we'll be able to get better tutorials. Thanks for your feedback though.
Thanks for that. We've actually proposed that for a revision, but I got a lot of push back because not everyone breadboards and header pins down makes it hard to protect from ESD (like on the C2000 launchpad). Still, I like your solution to have the pins on both sides of the board.
You are one of the better TA's :-) I do agree though... for a while I was hoarding LaunchPads v1.4's was for that exact reason. If you get some good tips on more effective/efficient videos please share! Trying to learn how to speak less, use more visuals, but that just seems to lengthen it!) Thank you for your feedback though, I just REALLY hope you make sure to post it on the TI site too. I figure they need to hear it from more people (who weren't provoked by me), then they will listen better.
Not a problem. Sorry, I'm probably raging at the wrong person here. Thanks for posting a video with possible alternatives and work a rounds for the male headers. In addition, I need to learn to shorten my video lengths as well. One thing to consider, as a lab TA myself for an embedded systems class @ a university, I'd far sooner spend an afternoon soldering in female headers for the students than dealing with male headers for the rest of the semester. Having the option to choose is super nice!
I do agree with you about the wires and in the perfect world we could easily change the headers. Would you please do me a favour and post this exact feedback on the linked Blog instead? The issue with TI making mistakes and not listening to fix them is something I'd love to see us improve, but it's really difficult to make a convincing case when the feedback isn't easy and in font of the engineers making the decisions-- so help me make a change by posting it on the TI website
As an Arduino hobbyist, I found the Launchpad's male headers a bit odd at first. However, changing them to female ones is a nice soldering exercise, and it's good to see TI is taking this issue seriously. The back-to-back solution seems interesting - I'll give it a try - and meanwhile, thanks for this video!
Yeah, I find when using Energia the MSP 430 is about as easy to use as Arduino and basic stuff ports fairly easy. I think the best route would be a set of gender changing headers to convert to female. My arduino projects ported very easy but I was unable to test because of not having a way to jumper over to my breadboard. I tried alligator clips but they were too bulky and tended to want to short between pins.
I completely understand. We're looking to add an extra set of female headers in the box to try and help out (maybe if you see that part of the video). But, I do agree personally that male headers aren't a good idea, but it's now trying to find ways to change/adjust for that until we can make a difference.
She would make well over 500k per year in ad revenue if she revived this channel or even created a dedicated ASMR channel… non of that pretend stuff either; keep it real tech talk too.
They should cost the same. The press fit parts have "barbs" stamped into the side of the pins that go into the board. It is difficult to compare prices because if you try and buy plain old 10x1 gold flash plated headers the price ranges from $0.20 to $0.80 each. We can't draw reasonable comparisons when the baseline is all over the map. We know the nice folks at TI must be getting a good bulk discount to include them with Launchpad, so we can assume they can get press-fits at a bulk price too.
Well. I just got two lengths of ribbon cable. Soldered the female header on one end, and solid wires on the other end (Headers are not available locally here). Then placed shrinkable tubes on it to prevent the contacts from touching. That's it. I already have a female to male cable to connect my LP to my breadboard. Didn't even take me more than 30 minutes to do.
Have you considered not installing headers in the Launchpad board and just including the "press-fit" style headers and receptacles. By getting the hole size in the PCB reduced to the proper diameter you can get a really tight friction fit with the press-fit parts. That way people who have a preference can install the headers they prefer, and engineers (who the Launchpad was originally designed for) don't have to de-solder parts to get to the nice empty holes.
I would rather have the option of not soldering the headers on the board. I've had to remove both headers (destructively) and have installed new headers. I use a male header on the power side / bottom and a female header on the usb / top side. This lets us mount the launchpad on our existing development i/o board as well as on our existing robot platform.
Just cross posting: The female header would have been ideal, for the same reason listed for female jumper wire. Turning Female to male is simple with the included male headers from the r1.4, just pop them on to the female header when needed. Plug and Play, no soldering required, and would still work with the Capsense and all other boosterpacks. And since headers are pretty much a standard component, even if they get lost, easy to replace. And you forgot to mention one option, WIRE WRAPPING
Thanks.. I hope to see more TI products in Turkey as well.. I can only find Launchpad MSP430 series easily. I had to make a little personal stock of them : ) I have both rev 1.4 and 1.5 and i have to use 1.4 for testing purposes. In general i love the things in the box, usb cable, XT etc.. Oh also those cute stickers !! Keep those in the boxxx : ) LAstly; Energia Project is very very important. I think TI should support it. Otherwise it is not practical to work with them for hobbyists..
how I can use 1 STELLARIS and 2 MSP430 ? I need to establish connection between them, with CC2530 ? when I try to flash 2 plates MSP 430 I get an error message, that there is no plate connected. I get into the MSP430 folder instead of stellaris and not let me. (Have a .txt extension) help please.
As for the 11 minutes, I do apologize -- I know it was a little lengthy-- I'm in process of learning how to do video blogs and this was my first one. This post was definitely NOT a solution, but rather meant to share some of the things I've seen at other University labs.
5:24 did you just break one the pins on header? you are strong!!!! Oh by the way, if you wan't to keep those male headers, fine! you could put them under the board so it directly go on to breadboard itself! you happy and your customer happy! Pins at the back are not obstructed by components, if they want to NOT breadboard, they still can use their female connectors. Oh, One more thing! My problem is not what headers you are using. Where I live, to get my hand on one of those boards I have to pay half of my salary and I'm senior engineer in my company.
Here's another idea nobody has offered yet: Raid the room where they store all the old retired computers and scavenge all of the ribbon cables from them. Use the first 10 odd pins on one end of the cable (1, 3 ,5 .. 19) to connect to a male Launchpad header, then stuff your male wires into the first 10 odd pins on the other end. Ribbon cable == really long female-female adapter. P.S. The (J6) Vcc and 2 GNDs are 0.20" from the (J2) header, so they mate too, and come across to the other side.
What everyone seems to forget is that the launchpad has both male and female pins. Turn the damn thing around, see those little holes underneath? There you go.
seems like there's more adapting then not, couldn't people using logic analysers just use a male to male jumper to connect a scope? seeing as most people don't even have logic analysers and osciliscopes.
Solid core wire is insanely cheap, reliable, and easy to use. "Cheap" female-male wires are far more expensive and have reliability issues after a couple months of gentle use. Engineering time is too valuable to deal with poor interface connection issues. TI has a long history of making bad mistakes and generally their answer is, "Well, we've already made this mistake on a lot of other products so were going to keep doing it!". An 11 minute video is not the solution. Listen to your complaints!
First male headers, now doubling the price on the launchpad? A STM32F0 discovery board has 4x the flash program space, 15x the RAM, 3x the core CLK speed, 2x w/ 32bit instruction set and is now CHEAPER than the msp430 launchpad. The MSP430 launchpad has lost its only selling point which was its price. 32 bit ARM processors are far more powerful, have more open source support, and compete with the msp430 in their low power models. Why use TI msp430s at school or work now? *cries* why TI...why...?
ARM processors are made to be used with an operating system. Thus you can't really compare them with such small microcontrollers like the MSP430. And an 32 Bit ARM doesn't have a lower power consumption than the MSP430.
i don't want to listennn... i don't want to listen.. noone can explain me this.. it is a very very bad decision for prototyping. why do i have to have a female-male cables rather than a simple regular cable ?? sorry TI but i hope you correct this next time.. thanks.
Use with logic analyzers is a weak justification for male headers. If someone needs to use LA clips, just drop in a set of Male to Male headers. Problem Solved. Ability to use cheap and plentiful BARE WIRE far excedes the convenience of hooking up the occasional logic analyzer.
You have the most relaxing voice ever. I watch this video from time to time just to relax
Agree and it's on the revision list to include the extra set, but it would be so much nicer to have a part that was already put together!
I do agree with you on the easy to use aspect.
if you can, check out Energia.
also, we've got ModKit support on the LaunchPad now. Hopefully with the partner system we're trying to enable we'll be able to get better tutorials.
Thanks for your feedback though.
Thanks for that. We've actually proposed that for a revision, but I got a lot of push back because not everyone breadboards and header pins down makes it hard to protect from ESD (like on the C2000 launchpad). Still, I like your solution to have the pins on both sides of the board.
That is a great idea, no more soldering. It would be a question of cost though. How much are press fit vs standard headers?
You are one of the better TA's :-) I do agree though... for a while I was hoarding LaunchPads v1.4's was for that exact reason.
If you get some good tips on more effective/efficient videos please share! Trying to learn how to speak less, use more visuals, but that just seems to lengthen it!) Thank you for your feedback though, I just REALLY hope you make sure to post it on the TI site too. I figure they need to hear it from more people (who weren't provoked by me), then they will listen better.
Not a problem. Sorry, I'm probably raging at the wrong person here. Thanks for posting a video with possible alternatives and work a rounds for the male headers. In addition, I need to learn to shorten my video lengths as well.
One thing to consider, as a lab TA myself for an embedded systems class @ a university, I'd far sooner spend an afternoon soldering in female headers for the students than dealing with male headers for the rest of the semester. Having the option to choose is super nice!
I do agree with you about the wires and in the perfect world we could easily change the headers.
Would you please do me a favour and post this exact feedback on the linked Blog instead? The issue with TI making mistakes and not listening to fix them is something I'd love to see us improve, but it's really difficult to make a convincing case when the feedback isn't easy and in font of the engineers making the decisions-- so help me make a change by posting it on the TI website
As an Arduino hobbyist, I found the Launchpad's male headers a bit odd at first. However, changing them to female ones is a nice soldering exercise, and it's good to see TI is taking this issue seriously. The back-to-back solution seems interesting - I'll give it a try - and meanwhile, thanks for this video!
I'd love to see Code Composer Studio free for everyone, the best we've done is that it's free for Education.
Yeah, I find when using Energia the MSP 430 is about as easy to use as Arduino and basic stuff ports fairly easy. I think the best route would be a set of gender changing headers to convert to female. My arduino projects ported very easy but I was unable to test because of not having a way to jumper over to my breadboard. I tried alligator clips but they were too bulky and tended to want to short between pins.
I completely understand. We're looking to add an extra set of female headers in the box to try and help out (maybe if you see that part of the video). But, I do agree personally that male headers aren't a good idea, but it's now trying to find ways to change/adjust for that until we can make a difference.
Awesome ASMR from this
She would make well over 500k per year in ad revenue if she revived this channel or even created a dedicated ASMR channel… non of that pretend stuff either; keep it real tech talk too.
@@dw.imaging you know it!
They should cost the same. The press fit parts have "barbs" stamped into the side of the pins that go into the board. It is difficult to compare prices because if you try and buy plain old 10x1 gold flash plated headers the price ranges from $0.20 to $0.80 each. We can't draw reasonable comparisons when the baseline is all over the map. We know the nice folks at TI must be getting a good bulk discount to include them with Launchpad, so we can assume they can get press-fits at a bulk price too.
Well. I just got two lengths of ribbon cable. Soldered the female header on one end, and solid wires on the other end (Headers are not available locally here). Then placed shrinkable tubes on it to prevent the contacts from touching. That's it. I already have a female to male cable to connect my LP to my breadboard. Didn't even take me more than 30 minutes to do.
Have you considered not installing headers in the Launchpad board and just including the "press-fit" style headers and receptacles. By getting the hole size in the PCB reduced to the proper diameter you can get a really tight friction fit with the press-fit parts. That way people who have a preference can install the headers they prefer, and engineers (who the Launchpad was originally designed for) don't have to de-solder parts to get to the nice empty holes.
I would rather have the option of not soldering the headers on the board. I've had to remove both headers (destructively) and have installed new headers. I use a male header on the power side / bottom and a female header on the usb / top side. This lets us mount the launchpad on our existing development i/o board as well as on our existing robot platform.
Just cross posting:
The female header would have been ideal, for the same reason listed for female jumper wire. Turning Female to male is simple with the included male headers from the r1.4, just pop them on to the female header when needed. Plug and Play, no soldering required, and would still work with the Capsense and all other boosterpacks. And since headers are pretty much a standard component, even if they get lost, easy to replace.
And you forgot to mention one option, WIRE WRAPPING
Thanks.. I hope to see more TI products in Turkey as well.. I can only find Launchpad MSP430 series easily. I had to make a little personal stock of them : ) I have both rev 1.4 and 1.5 and i have to use 1.4 for testing purposes. In general i love the things in the box, usb cable, XT etc.. Oh also those cute stickers !! Keep those in the boxxx : ) LAstly; Energia Project is very very important. I think TI should support it. Otherwise it is not practical to work with them for hobbyists..
how I can use 1 STELLARIS and 2 MSP430 ?
I need to establish connection between them, with CC2530 ?
when I try to flash 2 plates MSP 430 I get an error message, that there is no plate connected.
I get into the MSP430 folder instead of stellaris and not let me. (Have a .txt extension)
help please.
As for the 11 minutes, I do apologize -- I know it was a little lengthy-- I'm in process of learning how to do video blogs and this was my first one. This post was definitely NOT a solution, but rather meant to share some of the things I've seen at other University labs.
5:24 did you just break one the pins on header? you are strong!!!! Oh by the way, if you wan't to keep those male headers, fine! you could put them under the board so it directly go on to breadboard itself! you happy and your customer happy! Pins at the back are not obstructed by components, if they want to NOT breadboard, they still can use their female connectors.
Oh, One more thing! My problem is not what headers you are using. Where I live, to get my hand on one of those boards I have to pay half of my salary and I'm senior engineer in my company.
Here's another idea nobody has offered yet: Raid the room where they store all the old retired computers and scavenge all of the ribbon cables from them. Use the first 10 odd pins on one end of the cable (1, 3 ,5 .. 19) to connect to a male Launchpad header, then stuff your male wires into the first 10 odd pins on the other end.
Ribbon cable == really long female-female adapter.
P.S. The (J6) Vcc and 2 GNDs are 0.20" from the (J2) header, so they mate too, and come across to the other side.
Oh yeah, and why charge for Code Composer Studio when AVR Studio is free?
What everyone seems to forget is that the launchpad has both male and female pins. Turn the damn thing around, see those little holes underneath? There you go.
thats new dude XD
Yeah, my MSP4306989 has those underneath, I guess my board is bisexual or something? LMAO
The sound you hear a couple times in the video is almost certainly her cell phone vibrating on the table.
Just get a female to female connector and strip on end to make it male. Do I get an msp430 for that? :P
(better TA's because most of the ones that I deal with would rather not deal with it and aren't willing to go the extra step for the sake of the lab).
I thought it was because of the patriarchy...
seems like there's more adapting then not, couldn't people using logic analysers just use a male to male jumper to connect a scope? seeing as most people don't even have logic analysers and osciliscopes.
Not sure what the nose blowing is? If it's me, I'm sorry-- that's slightly awkward.
One time charge is acceptable but yearly charging is tedious
Solid core wire is insanely cheap, reliable, and easy to use. "Cheap" female-male wires are far more expensive and have reliability issues after a couple months of gentle use. Engineering time is too valuable to deal with poor interface connection issues.
TI has a long history of making bad mistakes and generally their answer is, "Well, we've already made this mistake on a lot of other products so were going to keep doing it!". An 11 minute video is not the solution. Listen to your complaints!
DealExtreme is the cheapest place I have found for jumper wires both f/f & m/m
First male headers, now doubling the price on the launchpad? A STM32F0 discovery board has 4x the flash program space, 15x the RAM, 3x the core CLK speed, 2x w/ 32bit instruction set and is now CHEAPER than the msp430 launchpad. The MSP430 launchpad has lost its only selling point which was its price. 32 bit ARM processors are far more powerful, have more open source support, and compete with the msp430 in their low power models. Why use TI msp430s at school or work now? *cries* why TI...why...?
ARM processors are made to be used with an operating system.
Thus you can't really compare them with such small microcontrollers like the MSP430.
And an 32 Bit ARM doesn't have a lower power consumption than the MSP430.
Super!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
i don't want to listennn... i don't want to listen.. noone can explain me this.. it is a very very bad decision for prototyping. why do i have to have a female-male cables rather than a simple regular cable ?? sorry TI but i hope you correct this next time.. thanks.
You need to speak up and project your voice when you present, you're hard to hear.
Use with logic analyzers is a weak justification for male headers. If someone needs to use LA clips, just drop in a set of Male to Male headers. Problem Solved.
Ability to use cheap and plentiful BARE WIRE far excedes the convenience of hooking up the occasional logic analyzer.
like =)
Oh btw. i am the one who has disliked this video ^_^ because i didn't like this male header idea.
It/s more better than Playboy!!!!!!!!!!