Arduino LLC has launched a new official Arduino board with MKR1000 board under the Arduino brand in the US, and Genuino brand in the rest of the world. The tiny board features Atmel ATSAMW25 SmartConnect module comprised of Atmel SAMD21 ARM Cortex-M0+ MCU, WINC1500 2.4GHz 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi chip, and ECC508 CryptoAuthentication device.
MKR1000 specifications:
- MCU – Atmel SAMD21 Cortex-M0+ MCU @ 48 MHz with 32KB SRAM, 256 KB flash memory
- WiFi – 802.11b/g/n WiFi (2.4 GHz) via WINC1500 with 1×1 PCN antenna, support for SHA 256 certificates.
- I/Os
- 8x digital I/Os
- 12x PWM pins
- 1x UART, 1x SPI, 1x I2C
- 7x analog input pins
- 1x analog output pin
- 8x external interrupts
- Operating voltage – 3.3V
- DC Current per I/O Pin – 7 mA
- USB – micro USB port for power and programming
- Misc – RTC, power and charge LEDs
- Power Supply
- 5V only via USB or VIN pin
- Li-Po single cell, 3.7V, 700mAh minimum
- Dimensions – TBD
The board is programmable with the Arduino IDE, as with all other Arduino boards, however, you must be aware that I/Os only support 3.3V (not 5V like most Arduino board), and VIN only support 5V, and not a voltage range as on Arduino UNO for example. You can find more documentation including the hardware designs files on Arduino / Genuino MKR1000 product page, and the Getting Started Guide.
Arduino MKR1000 and Genuino MKR1000 boards sell respectively for $34.99 and 30.99 Euros + VAT on Arduino.cc store.
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.
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That looks very similar to Adafruit’s Feather boards.
3x times too expensive. Give us a clone !
@Ian Tester
thanks, looks like the feather boards are better in every way…
btw: don’t forget the sodaq autonomo, which adds solar charging (without which the lipo battery is of limited value)
@Ian Tester
Same price too: https://www.adafruit.com/products/3010
Maybe thats why the Arduino guys came up with that $35 price tag then.
@Singman
if you can get by with fewer gpio’s, the Feather HUZZAH with ESP8266 is half the price
but really, if you want cheap, order some arduino nano/micro + solar charging boards from china for ~$1 apiece…
Another 3.3 “super” microcontroller development board is the WeMos D1 (R2) WiFi Board. Have not tried the R2 version, but the “R1” version works “easy-peasy” to borrow an expression from my daughter. The WiFi is based on the ESP8266 and there is an ESP8266 Core you can use to get it up relatively painlessly from GitHub. In China, they sell for 35RMB or about $6.00 US. Dirt cheap. Hope the company is making enough money to be around a while. Have two boards. The first one I played with to get familiar with the board by breadboarding it to a bunch of Arduino tutorial circuits seems not to run well on WiFi (up just 6 hours at longest point), but my other board runs the AdvancedServer sketch for days at a time. Sure beats those flakey Arduino Ethernet shields. The two down sides are that it is a 3.3V system, so need to use level shifters (I buy/use 4-channel level shifter modules based on the BSS138 FETs, which are also dirt cheap in China), and there is a shortage of digital and analog I/O pins (11 digital I/O and , one analog in (ADC)). The clock speed in 80MHz. What is the clock speed on the Arduino MKR1000? I’m sure I’ll by one when I get back from China.
@Wm Moore
WeMos has done a good job with their boards. I especially linke D1 mini and shields, which I tried @ http://www.cnx-software.com/2016/03/22/getting-started-with-wemos-d1-mini-esp8266-board-dht-relay-shields/
MKR1000 MCU is clocked at 48 MHz. The Arduino board main advantage is probably the multiple ADC inputs, and one DAC output. Power consumption might be better too (TBC).
Looks like a copy of the feather boards from adafruit, but differing pins. It has a slightly different AVR ARM processor than the feather m0 ( and the arduino zero) but very similar specs. I am not sure yet of any advantages with the new arduino, however adafruit sells the Adafruit Feather M0 WiFi – ATSAMD21 + ATWINC1500 for slightly less, with many shields and accessories, as well as other processors in the same form factor. Some times integrated is not better, for the wifi, if the integrated cpu needs to divide its resources between the networking tasks and everyhthing else. Will need to look into the details, but will probably stick with the feather.