Last year, we’ve been presented with many small Arduino compatible boards such as MicroDuino, RFDuino, BLEDuino, Spark Core, Olimexino-Nano and more… All these boards have been own strength and connectivity options, but if you want to see what going on in your board, you’d either need to connect it to your computer, or connect some LEDs or an external display. Geek Ammo’s MicroView fixes that by providing an Arduino compatible board nicely combined with a built-in OLED display. This allows you to display stats, weather, play games, create wearable projects (watch, necklace), and all sort of other projects that may require a small display.
MicroView specifications:
- MCU – Atmel ATmega328P @ 16 MHz with 32KB flash, 2 KB SRAM, and 1KB EEPROM
- Display – 64×48 OLED Display
- Digital I/O – 12 (of which 3 provide PWM output)
- Analog Input – 6
- Operating Voltage: 5V
- Input Voltage: 3.3VDC to 16VDC, no power regulator needed
- Breadboard friendly standard DIP package
A USB-serial programmer is also available, and required to do anything with the board, unless you have or make your own USB to serial programmer. The board is 100% software compatible with Arduino, and support Arduino IDE 1.0+ for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. There’s also a library specifically design to easily display text, sprites, graphs and gauges on the OLED display. Hardware design files and Arduino libraries will be available on Github.
Beside the board and programmer, a learning kit can also be purchased with a solderless breadboard, jumper wires, transistors, diodes, resistors, LEDs, a shift register, a temperature sensor, a small servo and DC motor, a 5V relay, a piezo buzzer, buttons, and a few more bits and pieces. This kit will be used to teach 11 circuits via the company’s interactive course available via iPad, Microsoft Surface and Web Browsers on Windows, Mac and Linux., including:
- Blinking LEDs and creating different colors on an RGB LED.
- Getting readings from a potentiometer
- Taking the input from a push button
- Sensing Temperature and Light
- Controlling actuators relays, motors & servos
- Making sound
The company launched a Kickstarter campaign yesterday, and have already received nearly $50,000 in pledges, and surpassed their $25,000 funding target. You can get MicroView for $45, but you’ll probably want to pledge at least $55 to get the USB to serial board as well, and the aforementioned Learning kit sells for $95. Perks should ship in July or August 2014. The people behind the project own Little Bird Electronics, were the original designers of the Ninja Block, and manufacturing & shipping will be managed by Sparkfun, so I’m quite confident their won’t be major issues with the project.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
Support CNX Software! Donate via cryptocurrencies, become a Patron on Patreon, or purchase goods on Amazon or Aliexpress
Good to see an Aussie project getting some attention 🙂