Hands on with the new PSoC 5 Prototyping kit

Getting in touch with the PSoC 5 had been an expensive mission in the past. The development kit is around 100USD and if you order it with shipping, taxes etc… better don’t ask…

The difference between the PSoC 5 and the PSoC 4 is that the PSoC 5 is using a Cortex M3 while the PSoC 4 is using a Cortex M0. That means that the PSoC 5 has a bigger instruction set, another multiplier, hardware interrupts etc. Also the PSoC 5 is enabling DMA, USB, and has more available Universal Building Blocks, just to name a few features. In other words, the PSoC 5 is the PSoC 4 for grown-ups 😉

The Problem with this chip however had been that it only comes with this big bulky expensive development kit. Its a great kit, but not really what you need as a hobbiest.

But there is hope…
Cypress announced a new PSoC5 prototyping kit and gave me one to test around.

And this little thing is really a game changer in my eyes. Why?
First of all its low cost, its 10USD..!
However, the most important feature in my eyes is that it comes with a programmer and debugger! That was the biggest drawback of those PSoC4 Prototyping Kits. UART Bootloader and no debugger… nah…

To give a small impression on what is possible with the PSoC 5 I added some impressions. Enjoy!

Filter design
Filter design
DSP-Unit Assembler entry
DSP-Unit Assembler entry
Waveform Generator
Waveform Generator
USB
USB

5 thoughts on “Hands on with the new PSoC 5 Prototyping kit”

  1. Hello Thomas,
    i am an german electrical engineer (FH) and i saw the video on yotube about your PSoC5 VGA Demo.
    I know the blog “No bitbanging necessary, or How to Drive a VGA Monitor on a PSoC 5LP w/Verilog”, but your demo is better than this description. Is is possible to get the source-code of your PSoC5 VGA Demo for a private project?.

    Best regards,
    Peter

  2. Hi,

    I am currently (for more than 1 year now… not a lot of spare time) playing with PSoC as a Z80 peripheral, for retrocomputing purposes. You can find some overviews on blog.pommerie-michel.fr .
    It could be fun to add video output via the PSoC in addition to the logic glue/sdcard/uart functions actually emulated through the Cypress chip. It would allow to have a full cpm system in 3 chips (z80,sram,psoc). Could I get a look at your sources too , please ?
    Nice website.
    Best regards,

    Jean-Jacques

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