Introduction
MediaCow Micro is a series of projects that I came up with in July 2021. It is a challenge of designing 26 different portable media player devices with each device using a microcontroller from a different vendor.
Each design is named in alphabetical order, from MediaCow Micro A to MediaCow Micro Z. The order that these devices are designed in are arbitrary and designs using more popular microcontrollers may be developed first for some ease in development as I would be learning while I work on these projects.
Due to lack of funding and the difficulty of sourcing some chips, a project would be considered "finished" when the entire design including the PCB and case is finalized instead of having the project finished when there is a working, physical prototype.
Disclaimer
The following is preliminary and may change at any time.
Hardware
Hardware greatly varies by device; some may have external DRAM, some may have coprocessors that handle audio decode, some may have displays while some do not.
In cases where these devices use a coprocessor, the "Microcontroller" is what is considered the main processor.
If a table cell is empty, the value is to be determined.
Fields:
- Device: Device name
- Codename: Project codename
- Microcontroller: Main processor that loads media
- Architecture: CPU architecture
- Memory type
- Status: Project status
| Device | Codename | Microcontroller | Architecture | Coprocessor | Memory | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MediaCow Micro A | Atmel/Microchip ATSAME7/V7 series | ARM Cortex-M7 | Not Started | |||
| MediaCow Micro B | Not Started | |||||
| MediaCow Micro C | Not Started | |||||
| MediaCow Micro D | Analog Devices ADuC series | Not Started | ||||
| MediaCow Micro E | Espressif ESP32-S3 series | Xtensa LX7 | SPI PSRAM | Not Started | ||
| MediaCow Micro F | Freescale/NXP i.MXRT series | ARM Cortex-M7 | SDRAM | Not Started | ||
| MediaCow Micro G | GigaDevice GD32H737ZIT6 | ARM Cortex-M7 | SDRAM | Not Started | ||
| MediaCow Micro H | Not Started | |||||
| MediaCow Micro I | Verona | Infineon XMC4400 series | SDRAM | Not Started | ||
| MediaCow Micro J | Not Started | |||||
| MediaCow Micro K | Not Started | |||||
| MediaCow Micro L | Not Started | |||||
| MediaCow Micro M | Microchip PIC32MZ series | MIPS32 | Not Started | |||
| MediaCow Micro N | Nordic Semiconductor nRF5340 | ARM Cortex-M33 | Not Started | |||
| MediaCow Micro O | Not Started | |||||
| MediaCow Micro P | Parallax Propeller 2 | Propeller | SPI PSRAM | Not Started | ||
| MediaCow Micro Q | Ambiq Apollo3 | ARM Cortex-M4 | N/A | Not Started | ||
| MediaCow Micro R | Salisbury | Raspberry Pi RP2350 | ARM Cortex-M33/RISC-V Hazard3 | N/A | SPI PSRAM | Not Started |
| MediaCow Micro S | Turlock | STMicroelectronics STM32F7/H7 | ARM Cortex-M7 | N/A | SDRAM | Not Started |
| MediaCow Micro T | Texas Instruments TM4C series | ARM Cortex-M4 | SDRAM | Not Started | ||
| MediaCow Micro U | Generalplus/Sunplus 8051 | 8051 | VLSI VS1053b | N/A | Not Started | |
| MediaCow Micro V | VLSI Solution VS1005(g) | ??? | N/A | Not Started | ||
| MediaCow Micro W | Nuvoton NUC505 series | ARM Cortex-M4F | Not Started | |||
| MediaCow Micro X | Xilinx/AMD Spartan FPGA | DDR? | Not Started | |||
| MediaCow Micro Y | SyncMOS 8051 | 8051 | VLSI VS1053b | N/A | Not Started | |
| MediaCow Micro Z | Zilog Z80 series | Z80 | VLSI VS1053b | M/A | Not Started |
Requirements
Requirements of each MediaCow Micro device is as follows
Hardware: - If a display is used, it must not be touchscreen. - At least one 3.5mm headphone audio output jack. - Battery-powered, can use either non-rechargeable or rechargeable batteries. - MicroMemory support is required for devices that required DRAM/PSRAM
Software: - Able to decode stereo 44.1KHz 24-bit audio. At least WAV support, additional support for compressed formats such as MP3, OGG and FLAC is preferred. - Must not run an operating system kernel; all code must be "bare-metal". An exception to this is FreeRTOS.