RedBearLab’s Blend Micro is an Arduino compatible board with Bluetooth 4.0 Low Enery (aka Bluetooth Smart) connectivity, that’s part of Arduino-at-heart, a partner program initiated by the developers of Arduino boards. It has been made to help design low power Internet-Of-Things (IoT) projects quickly and easily. Blend Micro technical specifications: MCU – Atmel ATmega32u4 @ 8 MHz with 32KB flash (4KB used by bootloader), 2.5 KB SRAM, and 1KB EEPROM. Connectivity – Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy via Nordic nRF8001 chip USB – 1x micro USB port I/Os: Serial (Tx/Rx) I2C, SPI PWM U to 16 Digital I/Os Up to 6 Analog inputs Operating Voltage – 3.3V Input Voltage – 5V (USB), and 3.3-12V (VIN) Power Consumption – 2mA (average – using Interrupt mode) Dimensions – 43.6 x 18.4 x 4.3mm Weight – 4g The specs are very similar to BLEDuino, except it’s slightly smaller. Blend Micro can communicate with BLE […]
WifiDuino Arduino Compatible Wi-Fi Board Features an Optional OLED Display (Crowdfunding)
Getting Wi-Fi with Arduino can be relatively expensive, and may take a little too much space. Spark Core board greatly addressed both price ($39) and form factor issue last, but there’s another option coming to market thanks to WifiDuino a $34 board with Wi-Fi, that’s tiny and Arduino compatible. An OLED display is also available as an option, at a lower price point than MicroView board, and including Wi-Fi or not, depending on the perk. WifiDuino hardware specifications: MCU – Atmel Atmega32U4 (same as Arduino Leonardo) Display – Optional 128×64 OLED display Connectivity – Optional Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g with STA, AP and ADHOC network modes Digital I/Os – 20 Analog I/Os – 12 Other I/Os – 7x PWM, UART, I2C, SPI Power – 5V Dimensions – Duino board only without Wi-Fi nor OLED: 25.6mm x 38.8mm x 11.0mm WifiDuino support the Arduino IDE, so you can write you sketch as […]
Prpl Non-Profit Organization to Work on Linux, Android, and OpenWRT for MIPS based Processors
In what looks like an answer, albeit fairly late, to Linaro, the non-profit organization working on open source software for ARM based SoCs, a consortium of companies composed of Imagination Technologies, Broadcom, Cavium, Lantiq, Qualcomm, Ingenic, and a few others, has funded Prpl (pronounced Purple), “an open-source, community-driven, collaborative, non-profit foundation targeting and supporting the MIPS architecture—and open to others—with a focus on enabling next-generation datacenter-to-device portable software and virtualized architectures”. The Prpl foundation will focus on three key objectives: Portability – To create ISA agnostic software for rapid deployment across multiple architecture Virtualization & security – To enable multi-tenant, secure, software, environments in datacenter, networking & storage, home, mobile and embedded Heterogeneous Computing – To leverage compute resources enabling next generation big data analytics and mining Initially there will PEG (Prpl Engineering Group) to take of the following projects for 4 market segments (datacenter, network & storage, connected consumers, […]
Arduino Unveils Arduino Zero Board Featuring Atmel SAMD21 Cortex M0+ MCU
Arduino and Atmel have jointly announced the latest addition to the Arduino family with Arduino Zero, a development board based on Atmel SAMD21 ARM Cortex M0+ MCU with the same form factor and headers as Arduino UNO / Leonardo. Arduino Zero specifications: Microcontroller – Atmel ATSAMD21G18 32-bit ARM Cortex M0+ MCU @ 48 MHz with 32 KB SRAM, 256 KB flash, up to 16KB EEPROM (By emulation). 48-pin LQFP package. Digital I/O Pins – 14, with 12 PWM and UART Analog Input Pins – 6, including 5 12bits ADC channels and one 10 bits DAC DC Current per I/O Pin – 7 mA USB – 2x micro USB ports Debugging – USB via Atmel’s Embedded Debugger (EDBG) on-board debugger, and JTAG Misc – reset button, 5 LEDs (Tx, Rx, L, On, Debug) Operating Voltage – 3.3V That’s about all we know for now, as tools support (Arduino IDE?), availability and […]
Arduino TRE Powered by TI Sitara AM335x Enters Beta with 50 Developer Boards Available for Purchase
Most official Arduino boards are based on Atmel AVR MCUs that allow hobbyists to control GPIOs, or low level interfaces, which is fine for applications that do not require much processing power. In the last couple of years however, the Arduino team has gone up the processor scale, first with Arduino Due with an ARM Cortex M3, then Arduino Yun with a MIPS processor running OpenWRT, and there latest board Arduino TRE features a Texas Instruments Sitara AM3359 AM3358 processor capable of running any Linux distributions supporting ARM. The board was announced last year, and Arduino has now launched a beta program where developers can purchase one of the 50 “Arduino TRE Developer Edition” boards for 149 Euros + VAT. Arduino TRE specifications (Parts related to TI Sitara highlighted in green): SoC – Texas Instrument Sitara AM3359AZCZ100 AM3358 (See comments) ARM Cortex A8 processor @ 1 GHz with PowerVR SGX530 […]
Meet Arduissimo, a Multi-core Arduino Board with a 16-core Xilinx Spartan FPGA (Crowdfunding)
Arduissimo a MultiCore Arduino project based on an FPGA Arduino Board powered by Xilinx Spartan LX6. It supports virtual peripherals, and allows you to configure PWMs, I2Cs, SPIs, and more on any of the 124 General Purpose IOs available through the board. Arduissimo specifications: FPGA – Xilinx Spartan-6 LX16 CSG326 -2 System Memory SDRAM Interface 1 – 1x 256MBit, 4x 64MBit, 166MHz SDRAM Interface 2 – 1x 64MBit, 166MHz Storage – EEprom for configuration file + micro SD card slot (4 pins connected to FPGA) USB – High Speed USB, FTDI HS2232HL (13 pins for “245 fifo sync” connected to the FPGA) 124 IOs: 4 IOs – 2.54mm header (e.g. Raspberry Pi) 72 IOs: Arduino Mega footprint (44 IOs shared with uPlug) 92 IOs: 8 uPlug connector slots (44 IOs shared with Arduino Mega) 50MHz oscillator Misc – Reset switch, 1x yellow LED, 4x bumpers Dimensions – 98.5 mm x […]
How to Make a $15 Web Server for IoT Applications
If you have an embedded project that requires some GPIOs, and Ethernet connectivity, you now have a few choices of low cost low boards such as the Raspberry Pi with Broadcom ARM11 SoC for $35 + shipping, Texas Instruments Connected LaunchPad with an ARM Cortex M4 MCU for $20 including shipping, and today I’ve given a try at a solution to run an HTTP server with an Arduino Leonardo clone connected to ENC28J60 Ethernet module that together cost about $15 including shipping. This Ethernet module has been around for a while and is well supported, I just never took the time to give it a try before. I’ve purchased ENC28J60 module on eBay for $3.46 and connected it via SPI to an Arduino Leonardo clone I acquired as part of a kit via Indiegogo for $12. The kit is not available for purchase outside the crowdfunding campaign, but you can […]
$11 ButtonDuino is Button-Sized Arduino Compatible Board (Crowdfunding)
Meet ButtonDuino yet another tiny, and cheap, Arduino compatible board. The board is breadboard mountable, measures just 18.64 mm x 18.25 mm, and sells for $10 (beta) and up, not including shipping. ButtonDuino specifications: MCU – Atmel ATTINY85-20H with 8K flash (6k available after USB bootloader), 512 bytes SRAM, 512 bytes EEPROM I/Os 6 x Available I/O Pins and I2C and SPI Expandable I2C and SPI Expandable 3 x 8 bit Hardware PWM pins 4 x 10 bit ADC pins Misc – Power LED, Test LED (Pin 1) Power – 5V, USB regulated powered up to 800mA via external power supply or 500mA from PC/Laptop. Dimensions – 18.64 mm x 18.25 mm (0.73in x 0.718in) The board is programmable via USB or AVR mkII, is compatible with Arduino IDE version 1.0 or greater in Windows, OSX and Linux, and supports NI LabVIEW. ButtonDuino’s schematics, code and bootloaders will be released once the product development […]