Teensy 4.0 iMXRT1062 Microcontroller Development Board (Standard Non-Lockable Version)

MMMMMMM Teensy :-) Sometimes a truly god-tier bit of tech comes out and I completely miss the memo. I think that's what happened here. If I may digress: Long ago, I was using serial port connected ADC chips on PC to do DIY electronics prototyping. I believe I was using Radio Skypipe back then if memory serves. Then eventually I discovered Arduino and was using that, again on PC to do live graphing of signals for projects. Then came the legendary Raspberry Pi and for the first time ever, was doing graphing on a dedicated computer. At first, it was the very overused MCP3008 ADC, then the MCP3304 which had 4x the resolution for the same sampling speed. All great! Limited to a mere <= 250ksps but great anyway. And then one day, very recently, I asked MS Copilot about options for higher sampling rate option. And Teensy was mentioned with great praise and numbers I had a hard time believing in. Just connect it to PC or Pi and have IT do the sampling, for up to and beyond 250ksps! What?? Ten times the speed?? BS, surely. I already had one for an upcoming audio project but I shelfed that project in favor of testing and holding MS Copilot to its once again wild claims of grandeur. Imagine my surprise when it turned out to be right! At first I had some problems, mainly with read noise, but I settled on a quick USB serial communication solution with 12 bit depth and 4x averaging at max possible speed for that approach, and easily got my 250ksps for a vastly superior result in data acquisition. The Teensy does the job of capture and serial broadcast, then a Python script receives that and sends it on to Python live plotting solutions over the LAN. Thus I can send the data to a local live grapher on Pi or PC, used for a slower 25 hour long term plot, and also simultaneously send the same data to any other machine on the network, which I use for realtime observation. These graphing programs run typically between 16 and 25 FPS due to limitations of the graphics speeds even on PC, but with a superior grapher I think I could go way beyond that. The data handling itself is stupid fast. Almost kinda oscilloscope fast. If I do a simpler grab-and-display frame based version of the grapher, it's good enough to look at the fluctuations inside a 1KHz and up sinewave, so it's getting it done nicely. So yes, for my application of abusing the Teensy as an ADC monster, it's a game changer. I've heard lots of people say it's an Arduino killer, and I believe it, although that seems a bit of an insult to this insanely capable little board. I haven't gone there yet, so I wouldn't know, but the specs don't lie and yeah, if you need a very capable little microcontroller then yes you need this at least to see if you can crack open your cage with it and fly away. The board itself connects to USB same as Arduino, and takes power from there. Once programmed, again same as Arduino but with a Teensy plugin, you can free yourself from USB tether and power it externally if you don't need USB communication. Using a no-power passthrough to eliminate USB power but keep USB data also works if you need to, but remember you must then use external power to run it. For crazy ADC people like me, know that there are ten total analog inputs for you to abuse and they are not SAR, so they don't contaminate each other's neighboring inputs requiring grounding or pull down resistors to prevent that. They just happily coexist. Each can also be set to specific bit depth resolutions and averaging in software. I started with 12-bit unsigned and 1x (no) averaging and got 30mV of read noise nothing would get rid of. Running at 4x averaging cut that down to just about 8mV, which is good enough for me and still gets me far faster sampling than my MCP series ADCs ever could. Faster sampling directly = cleaner data, and for the kind of fast transient work I often do, that is SO nice to have. These boards also do SPI if you need to play with that, a whopping 20 PWM pins, I2C and CAN bus. These are also widely used for advanced audio work like DSP (my eventual project is a realtime AGC box and maybe an eventual adaptive noise reduction box) with the available audio shield and audio libraries. The CPU on this thing is a fast single core running at default 600MHz but demonstrated to be stable overclocked at ~800MHz and experimentally driven to ~1GHz. Tight tight tight! Oh and they also have a micro SD card slot. I wish I had more to share about the vast array of applications this thing is good for, but I myself am just getting started. I'm sure there's more it can do than cannot. I'd love to see if it could pull off a basic audio streamer or even a webserver, and I'm sure I'll get there eventually. Also, the picture is my quickie electrometer design centered around an LMC6081 op amp IC and the Teensy for graphing the result. It's pretty hot, capable of detecting rubbed styro cups and human hair at several feet easy peasy. Power for the guts comes from external 12VDC to LM7085 5VDC, isolated from the noisy PC USB power coming from the Teensy. The inputs on Teensy ARE NOT 5VDC tolerant, so I divide the LMC6081 output down to roughly 3.5VDC and everybody's happy. I blew A0 on one of them with such a 5VDC input mistake so I behave myself better now. And no, it didn't affect the other inputs. A0 just reads low no Anyways, I feel confident enough to say this: Just do it! :-) NR417!

I needed a STRONG device to run some complicated software for our ghost finders outfit that I build all of our investigative hardware for. This is the best controller out there for complicated functions such as true radar detection while still allowing the programing using the old Arduino frontend that I am used to using. I love it.

I use 4.0 & 4.1 in my projects... Tindie has nice breakout boards to speed up prototypes... run 528mhz so it stays cool... I put a small heat sink a nd cranked to 900+...worked but I'm sure it will reduce its life... The Teensydruino IDE works great as I have a 4.1, 4.0, and Ardruino uno connect via USB... I like them... bought mine with eternity, RTC, and SD... the SD recognizes Mt 1TB card... so cool.

So many good uses for this product. I just wish the USB port was secured better to the board. Already replaced one because the solder broke. To be fair, I was rough with it and could have fixed it but at this price, I didn't bother.

These boards are perfect for any kind of audio project. My main reason for purchasing them was for the tk-talkie project, but I have one setup as a hearing assist as well. If you look at the website, there are a TON of audio project examples.

Of the two Teensys I ordered one works flawlessly, another fails to upload the code every other time. I am pretty sure it is not software. No fault of the seller, just poor quality control at the factory. P.S. - the seller resolved this issue right away. Great handling, even when seller wasn't at fault. Thanks and Respect. Changing rating to Five Stars.

I'm a huge fan of teensy to build midi controllers as they have USB MIDI, if you are coming from using an Arduino UNO the Teensy 4.0 will be night and day, the price is great specially with free prim shipping and this is a genuine product. Will keep buying.

Excellent performance at an affordable price. Easy to use with the Arduino environment. Very compact controller with high clock speed