Arduino has introduced the Portenta Proto Kit ME (Motion Environment) at CES 2025 with the kit designed to allow engineers, designers, and innovators to turn ideas into functional prototypes quickly.
The kit does not include new hardware, but it is based on the Arduino Portenta H7, Mid Carrier, and Nicla Sense ME module, as well as other off-the-shelf parts such as a 4G LTE and GNSS module and some Modulino modules, plus three months of Arduino Cloud access. The company expects the prototyping kit to be used for predictive maintenance, environmental sensing, and industrial automation prototypes.
Arduino Portenta Proto Kit ME kit content:
- Portenta H7 board based on STMicro STM32H747 Arm Cortex-M7 @ 480 MHz + M4 @ 200 MHz MCU capable of handling ML workloads and advanced processing
- Portenta Mid Carrier with gigabit Ethernet, USB 2.0 port, MIPI CSI and Arduino camera connectors, CAN Bus, mPCIe socket, GPIO header, and more
- Nicla Sense ME module based on Nordic Semi nRF52832 Cortex-M4 microcontroller and four Bosch SensorTech’s motion and environmental sensors; suitable for predictive maintenance and real-time sensing.
- Full set of Modulino nodes and Proto Shield: a range of I2C modules with sensors, buttons, LEDs, displays, etc…
- 4G GNSS Module Global mini PCIe module based on Quectel EG25-G for global cellular coverage and GPS location.
- Arduino Cloud for Business Voucher good for three months of cloud access for real-time data storage, visualization, and analysis.
The kit can be programmed through the Arduino IDE like other boards from the company. There’s also an 8-hour course entitled “Enterprise Prototyping with Portenta Proto Kit ME (ACE-220)” that’s free to attend at least until January 31, 2025. It covers the hardware description, and tutorials showing how to use the Arduino Cloud, the Nicla Sense ME, and Modulinos modules. Additional technical details and instructions on how to get started can also be found on the documentation website.
The Portenta Proto Kit ME is available now on the Arduino store for $389 or €437,98. Arduino will introduce the Portenta Proto Kit VE (Vision Environment) later this month with Nicla Vision and Nicla Sense Env for machine vision and environmental monitoring, instead of the Nicla Sense ME.
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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Never understood the use case for these. Prototyping is good, but you won’t use the Arduino API in the end product, especially if you’ll use an rtos, so you’d have to rewrite everything.. What have you gained, except a few more unused devkits on the shelf?