You might notice that the Arduino UNO was left off this list....that is because there is a fundamental difference to be found. There are -countless- projects / products out there that are based on the AT328/Arduino platform....so why don't we see the same width of dispersion (within the maker community) for ARM?
Things that are -not- the reason, in my opinion:
- No Suitable platforms: Yeah, right.
- No approachable platforms: Mbed solves this, as does Maple, and Arduino is working on their DUE.
- Not easily integratable: Mbed and clones are painless to integrate.
- Chips too expensive: with bare chips at $1.50 - $10 per, ARM is cheaper than AVR.
This is a non issue for the AT328 - Arduino croud – DIP, <$5.
This cost comes from:
- Lack of expertise: The number of people who can design, fabricate, and assemble a circuit-board for a 0.4mm tqfp is much smaller than those who can design and build for DIP (stripboard, anyone?)
- High unit cost... Even sending out to china, you are likely to spend close to $100 for a 2-3 boards. Then, unless you are proficient, you are going to take your chances or spend a large amount of time , or both, assembling the boards.
- High Cost ($50+) of common easily integrated DIP based products that solve the above problems
- Still developing IDE solutions that are not too intimidating for the novice
Even if breadboarding is falling out of favor for learning and experimentation, and it seems to be, a good baseboard (in the manner of the Arduino uno) solves this.
Breadboard/DIP/Strip/one sided/through hole/ easily made PCB's has value for to the amateur / small / educational / maker community for prototyping and small volume - proof of concepts. This is not likely to change
This explains my focus on low cost, DIP oriented solutions. I think that this is the way forward, at least until NXP/ST/TI/? Comes out with a PDIP28/40 ARM with respectable specs for <$10 (probably will never happen), realizing that this product will not really make money, but rather is advertising for adoption of their products.
I think that $10 is the magic number here. It may not be initially possible, but with scale it is. I can buy an 80x50mm board with an LPC1768 and a host of connectors for $15 in small production quantities. It should be possible to sell a chip that costs half as much, on a board 1/8th the size, with $2 less parts and connectors, for $10 and still make a couple of bucks. It will, of course, require an economy of scale.