The Teensy is my favorite microcontroller
and I use them in almost every project. So what is a Teensy? Is it a
super small Arduino? Well... [Simultaneously] Yes it is. No it's not. If you've watched Voidstar Lab before,
you know I use them in a LOT of projects. [Audio snippets] Teensy! Another Teensy...
A Teensy... Teensy? The Teensy. That Teensy! This video isn't sponsored by Teensy
or anyone. I just... really like Teensies. [faint crying in background]
And it's not only because I salvaged 20 of them
when my past client threw out an entire run of prototypes that I painstakingly hand-built and I
ripped them out in between bouts of sobbing. [Dramatic, resounding thuds] They're just great parts.
They have fast processors, tons of interfaces, a fair price, a
diminutive size, and are compatible with Arduino and most of its libraries.
So is a Teensy an Arduino? Well... kinda. You see, there are plenty of third-party
boards that are actually an Arduino schematic but have a different shape or
a bunch of integrated sensors or drivers. For instance, the Fio is an Arduino Micro
with a battery and a wireless socket. The MaKey MaKey is an Arduino Leonardo going
through a man-child phase, and the WTFduino is a banana-shaped middle finger right the face of
electrical engineering, but beneath the trolling, it's just an Arduino Uno shaped like
a banana. You can plug all these into your computer and they'll work with your
Arduino software right out of the box. The Teensy is not like these boards. The other
boards are like unexpected guests to your house party who look out of place, but once you
get talking, you find that they fit right in. The Teensy is a weirdo who builds a shed in your
backyard, pops open a beer, and says that because he's drinking indoors on your property, he's
technically part of your house party. You see, the Teensy uses a completely different chip
and architecture as any Arduino-brand Arduino, but through a filthy - but easy - hack, you
can interact and program with it as if it WERE an Arduino. The Teensies we care about - not you,
Teensies 1.0 and 2.0 [fart noise] use cortex-based Freescale processors and a proprietary USB
bootloader. Most Arduinos use AVR chips and a serial bootloader. In other words, the Arduino
IDE can't compile code to run on the Teensy and it can't interface with the Teensy to upload
it. That is, until Teensyduino shows it de wae. Teensyduino is the secret blend of herbs
and spices that makes this module so zesty. [Chef's kiss!] The simple installer modifies your Arduino
installation to hack Teensy support riiiiight up in there. So now, in your tools menu,
above Adafruit's saccharine product names, there's your selection of Teensy boards!
And holy cow, that is a LOT of options. What does this mean, keyboard languages?
What the..? CPU speed? Optimization? OOH-WHAAAA?!! We'll stick a pin in it, because we're not even
out of the installer! Here's a list of libraries. That's right, the installer also conveniently
pre-packages like 75 extremely useful libraries right into your Arduino folder, which is
actually quite convenient even if you're not using a Teensy. All of these libraries
are optimized and fully tested to run on Teensies, [Faint angelic chorus] and many of them
were actually modified by Paul Stoffregen, the main guy in the Teensy project, personally. Of
course, he also ported literally everything from the Arduino standard libraries to his Teensy
boards, and added support for the Teensy's special features, AND he commented all of it. What
a gentleman! Finally, the installer will show us the how-to guide; it's only two steps, and one of
them is usually optional. Allow me to demonstrate. It all starts with a sketch. Not a special
sketch, but, like, you know, a regular one for the Arduinos you already have. We just hit
'upload', maybe push the little button... wham, bam I'm more machine than man, now it's running
75 times faster! Of course Windows needs drivers, because when it comes to virtual COM ports,
no OS eats glue quite like Windows. Oh yeah, this will break Arduino's code signing
because we're modifying the binary, so MacOS, which considers users to be
The Three Stooges, will refuse to run it. [Larry the User] Ooh, I'm awful sorry! [Moe the Gatekeeper] So am
I! [Piano concussion noise] Instead, you just replace the
Arduino app with Teensyduino itself, which is even more convenient because you
don't even need the wizard! Sad wizard. All right, we drilled into the warm, pulsating
brain of a living software program and implanted some wetware. What do we get for it? Let's look
at the Teensy lineup. These are the Teensy boards that I use most often; there's the Teensy 3.2
which is a bit outdated but still very usable. All Teensies are 3V devices, but this one's pins
are 5V tolerant. It also has a hardware DAC, so you can output smooth waveforms without
using PWM - this is really useful for audio. This is the Teensy 3.6, which has a stronger
processor, more pins, and a built-in SD card slot. Finally, we have the Teensy 4.0, which is an
absolute powerhouse that's stuffed with features. That's the one we are going to look at today,
because it's the one I would recommend to people who don't already have a drawer
overflowing with salvaged Teensy 3.2's. [Teensy impact noise. Not a small collision
noise, the noise of Teensies colliding] Now that I have a Teensy and no project in mind,
what would you like to see me build with this thing? I will actually make the best idea and
make fun of the worst ones in a future episode! So yeah. You got the stones, leave a comment. The first thing to notice is this is a
tiny doggo. It's just 35 by 18 millimeters, which in American units, is reeeal [REDACTED]
small. Its length may be short, but it knows how to use it - there are 24 I/O pins that you can
fit into a breadboard, and if you flip it over you get 16 more. That's 40 I/O lines, compared
to the Arduino's [Lavalier-Arduino collision] 14. You know how the Arduino has six
analog pins? Teensy's got 14. Six PWM pins? Have 27. This thing's
got three digital interrupt pins. You know how many digital interrupt pins the
Teensy has? THEY'RE ALL INTERRUPT PINS. Finally, Arduinos have a serial port or two, SPI,
and one or two I2C interfaces. The Teensy 4.0 has SEVEN hardware serial ports plus up
to three more over three more over USB... [Cacophony of specs] ...three CAN buses,
USB host, SPDIF, and a partridge in a pear tree. We also get very flexible USB device
options, battery-backed real-time clock, and a bunch of other onboard peripherals that
only two people who watch this video will think to use in a project. You rule,
two people. I do this all for you. Oh yeah, the Teensy runs at 600 MEGAHERTZ!!!! So what does all this power,
engineering, and infrastructure cost you? 20 bucks. Costs you 20 bucks. The Teensy 4.0
is cheaper than an Arduino Uno, Nano, or Micro. Wait... what's that? The high-pitched shrieking
of self-important dweebs? Let's listen in! [Whiny bitch baby voices] It doesn't have
wiiireless! It's different, and that makes me scaaared! Twenty dollars is too much!
I can get a shady Arduino clone imported from a gray-market Shenzhen
sweatshop for two bucks fifty! It's not really the smallest
board in the market! REEEEEE..... [Taking notes] Not the smallest... reeee... got it. [Keyboard snaps shut] Those whiny bitches
actually make some good points. The Teensy is tiny, but the Tinyduino is teensier. Boards based
off Arduinos and Adafruit products are definitely easier for beginners to follow along. NRF52-based
boards use less power AND have wireless, and $20 is nowhere near the disposably low price of
overseas garbage or an ESP8266. No overlap there. So why do I always use them? Well like an AK-47,
the Teensy might not be the best at anything, but it's good everywhere. I can drop a Teensy into
almost any project and I know it'll perform well, work with my circuits, and just be a pleasure
to code. Of course, no matter how boneheadedly I design my models, there's probably
room to cram a Teensy somewhere in there. [Poor aim scratching sounds]
[Power-up sound] [Game voice] Red has gained control. Let's talk about that $20 price
point. Yes, you can buy very, very, very cheap clones of popular dev boards. Allow me
to explain what you get for your Andrew Jackson. Those rip-off boards are made with
the most trash-tier PCB's and parts they can sweep off the factory floor.
The parts are often under specs, fake, or just dead on arrival. The best deals will
ship from overseas, so they can take weeks to arrive. All these things feed that horse that I
will never stop beating - delays kill projects. Okay then, so why don't I just
buy a knockoff Teensy? Well, that's because the bootloader is proprietary and
PJRC locked it tighter than Mike Pence's butthole. [Crowd booing. BOOOOO!!!] Hey man, information wants to be
free, but developer wants to be paid. If you want to implement a Teensy yourself,
like I did with this smartwatch - I should really make an episode on this thing - you
can buy a bootstrapper chip directly from PJRC that's pre-programmed with the bootloader
for, like, like seven bucks. I didn't mention that - most Teensy boards put the bootloader
on a second microcontroller which lets you use every single bit of program memory. Also,
uh, you can't overwrite the bootloader and brick the chip, which is something
that totally happens, but never to me. So yeah, consider most of that 20
dollars a contribution to PJRC... [BOOOOO!!!!] No, not in that half-assed techno-utopian "support
the creators!" way. In a socially-acceptable CAPITALIST way. See, Paul and the Teensysphere
are major contributors to Arduino itself, and the work they do for Teensyduino seriously
improves mainstream Arduino. You ever plugged in a new board and Arduino automatically
recognizes what serial port it's on? Well, PJRC wrote that. You know how when you
have two conflicting libraries, Arduino will use the last library it finds instead of the
compatible library and cause, like, a million bugs? No you don't, because he fixed that. I want
to draw attention to all this stuff because many of these contributions are just in the
unsexy low-level code that affects everyone but are just too uncool, technically difficult,
or straight-up boring for most developers to fix. The open-source community just needs more folks
like them, and if paying seven dollars for a bootloader chip means contributing to that,
I have a hard time seeing that as a waste. OK, so you're sold. Or just, you know, pretend
you're sold. I'm a hardware-prototyping funny man, not Vince the ShamWow guy. How does one
wield such power? Well, here are some ideas. My personal favorite use for the Teensy
is to make USB devices like keyboards, mice, and MIDI instruments. You can use it to make
a joystick, a flight-sim cockpit, touchscreen, microphone or speaker, or a combination of
those. All of these modes use standard drivers, so the user probably has them installed already
and can use the Teensy-powered project right out of the box. I like the Teensy 4.0 for machine
learning, as I showed in my video about gesture recognition on a smart glove. It has enough memory
for a fairly plump TensorFlow neural network, and its screaming-fast processor does
a pretty good job of running it, too. Teensies are also your best choice for controlling
displays, and especially for strips of LED's. Paul wrote extremely well-optimized
libraries for both. This makes the Teensy a really good choice for Burning
Man-style LED and video installations, like this persistence-of-vision sphere
I helped build at my old hackerspace. Those features and more are why my
favorite Arduino isn't an Arduino at all, even though it kind of is, although it's not,
but it is. May your clock speeds be high and your peripherals numerous, no matter how tight
your situation. Thank you so much for watching! Hit Subscribe for more projects, presumably
all Teensy-based. Check the description and my channel for more Teensy-licious
projects, and I will see YOU in the future.
