• State
  • Locked Locked
  • Replies 5 replies
  • Subscribers 53 subscribers
  • Views 1712 views
  • Users 0 members are here
Support feedback
Options
Options
Related

This thread has been locked.

If you have a related question, please click the "Ask a related question" button in the top right corner. The newly created question will be automatically linked to this question.

Ti vs CSR

r c84546
Prodigy 100 points
Other Parts Discussed in Thread: CC2540

I've spent considerable effort designing the hardware and software around the CSR1010.  I followed a fairly typical development path of starting with a CSR dev board thru designing a custom PCB.

Overall I'd give CSR a grade of 6.5 out of 10.  Their documentation is their weak spot, it is non-existent, hard to find, or incomplete.  The OTAU process was particularly tiresome to get working, and it was obvious that it was put on the market before it was fully tested.  However they did provide a lot of sample code (both firmware and app-side) which mostly worked.

I'd like to know your experience working with the CC254x family.   How hard was it to learn the programming environment?  Was the documentation complete?  For example was it easy to find schematics of the dev board?  Did things mostly just work or did you have to spend days trying to figure things out?

  • 0
    Expert 1035 points

    Having dealt with CSR previous with their SiRF chips, I can relate to your rating.  Support is non-existent from them unless you are pushing huge volumes.  Documentation is a pain to get access to. 

    I suppose the main reason we went with Ti was the wealth of support, both with these forums, as well as documentation and reference designs and reference software (firmware).  Helps get you up and running much faster.

    Once you learn the basic architecture of the 8051 and OSAL process, everything is quite easy to program.  There will always be corner cases and odd dead-ends that you get with any chip-set.  But most of the time I`ve been well supported on these forums.

    In terms of a technical comparison of the hardware I can`t provide one as we did not even consider CSR, nor request a datasheet from them to compare specs.  

  • 0 in reply to Kevin Lockwood
    Prodigy 100 points

    I have found CSR's tech support on their BLE chips to be good.  One nice feature of the CSR101x family is that it has a daughter 8051 pio controller which allows real time processing. The main processor user process isn't real time as the processor may be off in the stack somewhere handling a ble packet.

    The main reason we went with CSR was cost, and I guess as in all things you get what you pay for.  The CSR1010 is currently (mid 2014) a little less than half the cost of the CC2540 , and it is my understanding that a Keil? compiler and IDE license (costing >$1k?) is also needed to work with the CC254x. 

  • 0
    Prodigy 10 points

    Is your experience with the most recent Starter Dev kit from CSR or with an earlier kit? Recently the amount of documentation provided has increased significantly.

  • 0 in reply to Clive Watts
    Prodigy 100 points

    I bought the starter kit in Jan 2014, then another in May 2014.

    There is zero documentation on the 8051 PIO controller, zero documentation on key merging for OTAU (have to reverse engineer Visual C++ sample project), zero documentation on the 8051 assembler,.

    I am subscribed to CSR's documentation update service, I haven't seen any recent significant increase. 

    What increase in documentation are you referring to? 

  • 0
    Intellectual 560 points

    I had story with CSR as it seems we must be ordered 1,000,000 pieces before they deign to speak to us.

    even after that I'm not sure of possibilities.

    Greetings to Dr. Nissim