#059 The Teensy 3.5: Bigger on the inside. // Review

Paul Stoffregen's new Teensy is packed with features.
Why is this board such a milestone? Will it become the "Raspberry Pi" of the Arduino world?

Website data coming! Man, that was exhausting doing all that testing this week!

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[PaulStoffregen]

Wow, great review video. Lots of actual testing! That's really refreshing to see, when so many others just hold the product up and talk about the specs they got from the web.

I recently updated the Arduino SD library to support the on-board SD card, in version 1.31-beta2, published shortly after this video was made. It uses only the small block size. I plan to greatly improve the default SD library with advanced caching, larger transfer sizes, and interrupt-safe usage... but that work is months away.

The USB audio distortion is a Macintosh driver bug. Teensy's actual audio rate is 41117 Hz, which is 17 Hz faster than the nominal 44.1 kHz. The USB audio uses the "asynchronous" mode, with a dedicated isochronous feedback endpoint. Your computer is supposed to change the data rate slightly, according to the feedback. Windows and Linux have no problems. Macintosh does it fine too, for a while. But with quite a lot of experimenting, I learned there's a limit of about 10 Hz. If you ask a Mac to alter the rate to more than 41110 Hz, it will do so, but after a few minutes the audio distorts terribly. It's definitely a bug on the Mac's driver, transmitting corrupted data. If you leave it running, after about half an hour the Mac will manage to properly adapt and the audio will return to normal, at the 41117 Hz rate.

Eventually, I'm going to rewrite the USB audio code to use "adaptive" mode instead of "asynchronous" (as defined by the USB audio class spec, available at usb dot org). Then Teensy will become responsible for adapting to the slight mismatch in sample rates. But that's going to take quite a lot of difficult programming work and quite a bit processing done on the Teensy side, so it's unlikely to happen until well into 2017. In the meantime, there's a #define you can edit in usb_audio.cpp (on a Mac, control-click Arduino and use "show package contents" to look inside), to enable a workaround that limits the feedback sent to your Mac to no more than 41110 Hz. Because your Mac won't be sending quite fast enough, the USB audio will get a buffer underrun once every few minutes, which can result in a slight click sound. Not perfect, but not nearly as bad as the horrible distortion from the Mac's driver bug.

[thebicycleguy]

Your concern with the BGA pins is justified. I have a 3.6 from the kickstarter that has intermittent connections in one of the corners after I soldered the header pins on. I would strongly suggest ordering the part with the header installed to avoid hassles of who caused the intermittent. Besides the thermal stress you mention the long, thin skinny board will definitely over stress the solder joints if your not extremely careful when removing the board.

[rwashi]

Nice one, good tests and I liked the visual effects.

[MyRadDesign]

It looks like Paul has done another great job. Regarding the potential issues with BGA and PCB flex, the use of soldered headers will likely provide enough rigidity to allow the board to be installed in a socket or breadboard if one is careful when inserting or removing the board from the socket. Time will tell.

[FurEngel]

Small mistake in your video. Both MCUs are SMD, the older version is a QFP (64pin) package (leaded). The BGA is a Lead-less package.

[bluehornet]

Great video as usual Mick! Just broke out a Teensy 3.2 today in fact...great little units!

[JamesCoyle]

Kinda considering one of these for a keyboard project I'm working on now. I was just gonna go with one of the older versions but the integrated SD card reader and extra power could let me do some cool stuff like add a display. The SD card would be a great solution to the issue of saving settings. I didn't really want to use the EEPROM as it only has a limited number of writes so the only other solution would have been to sync the data from a PC on power up but that is not ideal.

[darkus]

I think the distortion you experienced was a beat masher effect. I like that effect a lot and it sounded familiar

[KennethScharf]

Both the old and new Teensy's use SMT parts. The old were TQFP parts, the new BGA as you said, but BOTH are SMD (IE: NOT through hole). Oh and BGA is a proven tech that's been used for years. Your cellphone has mostly BGA parts, the Raspberry Pi has BGA parts. I think from the photo that the teensy's BGA parts weren't heated enough, or the pads under the board were not large enough, the part should have sunk down closer to the board.

[WereCatf]

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Paul and his cohorts have done a gosh durn fantastic job with all the different libraries and making things easy and accessible even for the less-experienced people. That said, I don't think these will become the "Raspberry Pi of the Arduino world;" accessing and using those extra pins under the board is quite complicated, these boards don't offer WiFi, Bluetooth or any other similar method for wireless communications, and they are *expensive.* I still believe the ESP32 is better-placed to reaching that position, once the libraries and boards mature.

PS. The gag with the BGA-drawing was fabulous, well done!

[kamashi]

@MickMake Nice video!
I am interested in replicating the Dhrystone and Whetstone benchmarks on several Arduino flavours.
Where can I find the code you used? Thanks

[JennyEverywhere]

On the point of running a good Kickstarter, I've argued long and heatedly with some people who feel that the devs should be hanging on their every word in the comment stream, constantly petting them and reassuring them. My feeling is that the devs' JOB is to _create the danged product._ I don't need them to answer every single redundant copy of the same four questions that they've ALREADY answered in an update AND in the FAQ. They don't need to jump to reply to every single comment and question. I think it's perfectly reasonable to gather up a lot of questions and issue an UPDATE addressing the important ones.

The update section on a Kickstarter is the appropriate place for the devs to keep in touch with the backers. It's automatically sent to ALL backers at the same time, the backers get an update notice in their email, and it's easily located on the kickstarter page. Not so for answering _comments._ They have to respond sometimes DAYS later, and the comments are not threaded. The person asking the question may not know they've been answered, and then there's the problem of multiple people asking the same question over and over and over, many of whom never see the answer because they aren't scrolling through days and weeks of comments to find them. Communications via the comments are useful for SOME things, but answering questions about progress is not one of them. I'd much rather see the devs save up the questions and answer in an update when they have time, than to assign someone the task of constantly monitoring and answering the comments -- because that just drains resources that could probably be put to more productive use actually MAKING THE PRODUCT.

Make the product. Then tell me what you did. So long as you don't go an excessive length of time without an update -- such as when there's a significant delay in production for any of the thousands of reasons I've seen such production get delayed in the Real World(tm) -- I'm perfectly happy to let you do your job cranking on code and developing hardware. A half day spent hand-holding on the comments is a half day that could have been spent making sure the project is on track, debugging a problem in the code, or handling a logistics problem in the fulfillment side of things.

If you need someone to hold your hand and constantly reassure you about the progress of a project, just save yourself the stress and ask for a refund. When the product comes out on Amazon, buy it then. You'll get your instant gratification when Prime delivers it a day or two later, and you won't be making the devs crazy with your constant harping and demanding they drop everything to reassure you.

[tobiamantovani]

I don't get a word btw it's a nice device for further e.g. diy synthetizer . I'll try to understand a little of this stuff

[zelra]

and this is an arm, right?
what about multitasking?

[dell]

hello I bought tenssy 3.6 is I would simply remove the code from my macbook a1534
how I do to simply remove the code.
is that you have to download a program ??
thank you in advance

[djlorenz]

finally got my teensy... looks great but the documentation is really poor :( hope they will start working in a better website or wiki for documentation.. right now is all around forum and posts...

[ramjet]

Mick, the Teensyduino 1.31 never seems to get past "next", it does not show "the Libraries" with checked boxes, just folder names, and cannot get to install. The Tutorials seem to skim over the installation. The versions have changed slightly.. Now its Teensyduino 1.31. I've got the 3.6, downloaded Arduino, Teensy and AVR insight, 48 hours of trying and no luck after watching countless tutorials that all seem to skim rapidly over the basics. Otherwise I love your tutorials.

[JustWastedHoursHere]

This kind of stuff is looking more and more accessible to the average person who does not have a background in electronics, which is a good thing. So many projects come to mind...

As an aside, at [7:48] did you say "guy-ro-scope"? Never heard it pronounced that way before! ;)


JW3HH

[metzger]

Fleetwood Mac - Tusk as an Testingmusic? Great Choice. Also great Video of course. The Teensy-Boards are my favorit SBC on the Market. What is your favorit SBC?

[pierpa_pierpaolo]

I would like to make this schematic but I have a problem with Arduino UNO, NANO Is there any way to update the bootloader directly from a sketch? But then what does this update consist of? Two system data. I also have a teensy 2.0 and would like to figure out how to make it work, ok you have to change the port name (which will not be called A0 .... a5). Could you please post a diagram with teensy. It always works with Arduino IDE but it requires the program (which gives problems during registration, it wants a precise path but there is no plan to change it....). Which version of Arduino IDE is "decent" and functional? Teensyduino what is the damn path for 'installation? It is NOT possible to specify where to install it. What a piece of crap. How do I solve it? I'll stand by. Thank you.