Micromint Bambino 200 and 200E Dual ARM Cortex M SBC Support .NET Gadgeteer and mbed Applications

Bambino 200E is based on the same platform but adds:

• Storage – 8 MB SPI Flash (vs 4MB)
• 10 Gadgeteer sockets
• 10/100 Mbps Ethernet
• microSD socket
• Xbee socket
• Power jack – 7 – 15 VDC

The company also explains that a JTAG for low level debugging, a coin cell battery for the RTC and screw terminals for power can be easily implemented in the field.

This type of asymmetric core SoC allows to run real-time control on the Cortex M0, and applications that may requires more processing power on the Cortex M4. The firmware is said to be open source with Keil MDK already supported, and support for gcc (Code Red) coming soon. Both mbed and .NET gadgeeter are supported in the platform. I had never heard about .NET gadgeeter previously. This open source framework supported by Microsoft (Yes, I’ve just used microsoft and open source in the same sentence…) may help bring more Windows developers to the embedded world, as I/O programming is done in C# in Visual Studio 2010 or 2012. Having said that it’s been around for nearly 3 years, and it does not appear to have gained that much traction.

Micromint Bambino 200 will be available on May 31 for $24.95, and Bambino 200E will be available on June 14 for $39.95. Further information is available on Bambino 200 page, and a forum is also available if you have any questions.