Atmel MCU Madness is an informal competition on Twitter where people vote for their favorite development boards. We are now at the quarter finals, and beside the usual suspects such as Raspberry Pi and ESP8266 boards, I also noticed one board that I had never heard of: AXEL Elettronica’s SmartEverything based on Atmel SAM D21 Cortex M0+ and featuring SigFox, BLE, NFC, and GPS connectivity, as well as various sensors such as humidity and temperature, 9-axis motion sensor, and so on. SmartEverything board specifications: MCU – Atmel SAM D21 ARM Cortex-M0+ MCU @ 48 MHz with 256KB Flash, 32KB SRAM Connectivity SIGFOX via Telit LE51-868 S SIGFOX 868 MHz Wireless Module with 12 months of network access included Bluetooth 4.0 LE via TDK SESUB-PAN-T2541 module based on Texas Instruments CC2541 NFC via NXP NT3H1101FHK NFC with separate antenna (included) GPS/GNSS via Telit Jupiter SE868-A GPS/GNSS module with integrated antenna. Supports […]
BPI-GSM Arduino Compatible Board Integrates a GSM & GPS Module, Sensors and an OLED Display
Banana Pi team has come up with another board, but this time it does not run Linux or Android, as they’ve made an Arduino compatible board called BPI-GSM based on Atmel ATmega2560 MCU with a light sensor, DHT22 temperature and humidity sensor, and a GSM/GRPS & GPS module powered by a LiPo battery. BPI-GSM board specifications: MCU – Atmel ATmega2560 8-bit AVR MCU @ 16 MHz with 256 KB flash, 8KB SRAM, 4KB EEPROM Connectivity – Simcom SIM808 GSM, GPRS, and GPS module + SIM card slot + Sensors – DHT22 temperature and humidity sensor, light sensor Display – OLED display Expansion headers – 54x digital I/O (including 14x PWM), 16x analog input, 4x UART. Max DC current per I/O: 40 mA. Misc – Reset button, LEDs Power Supply 5V via micro USB port 3.7V LiPo battery (2,500 mAh battery included in kit) Dimensions – TBD The board can be […]
$35 Arduino MKR1000 Board is Powered by Atmel ATSAMW25 WiFi Module
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 […]
DIGIO-128 Board Adds 128 GPIOs to Your Development Board
If you run out of GPIOs on your board, the easy way is to add an I2C GPIO expander, but those are normally limited to 8 or 16-channels, so Land Boards decided to create a board with 8 IO expanders making it a 128 channel IO expander that works on Raspberry Pi, BeagleBone Black, Arduino, and basically any boards with an I2C hardware or software implementation. DIGIO-128 board specifications: 8x Microchip MCP23017 16-bit I/O expander for up to 128 GPIOs Communication Interface – I2C host interface with 100/400 KHZ operation; 4-pin host interface connector (Ground, Power, Clock, Data) 8x 20-pin 2.54mm pitch connectors with 16 I/Os, 2x VCC, and 2 ground 2x 4-pin interrupt connectors Data Storage – Microchip 24LC024 2K EEPROM with board info. 3.3V or 5V operation Dimensions – 95 x 95 mm You can find out to use the board in the Wiki for code for Raspberry […]
Getting Started with Wemos D1 mini ESP8266 Board, DHT & Relay Shields
Wemos D1 mini is an ESP8266 board that’s interesting thanks to its size, its low price ($4), micro USB power, its shields, and a documentation that looks fairly good. The board can be programmed with Arduino or Lua, and supports both serial and OTA programming. I’ve decided to give it a try and bought the board together with two temperature shields, a relay shield, and micro SD shield. I got all for $ 14.00 from Wemos Aliexpress shop, and it took about one month for delivery. I can also see they’ve recently released a new OLED shield selling for about $5. All shields were shipped inside their own anti-static bags. The pins are clearly marked on both side of the board and the shields. One side of the board features ESP8266 module. and the other side has CH340 serial to USB chip, and the reset button. The provided headers make […]
Cleo35 Touchscreen Display for Arduino UNO Comes with Tutorials and Example Projects (Crowdfunding)
There are already various options to add a (touscheen) display to Arduino board with software support including TFTLibrary for Arduino, and recently I tried Nextion serial touchscreen displays that are supported by a WYSIWYG editor, but the latter is only supported in Windows and not exactly user-friendly, and I found the few provided tutorials would only work with a specific resolution incompatible with the displays I had been sent. So I gave up on the idea of interfacing the display with Arduino or ESP8266 as it would be too time-consuming. FTDI CleO project might be faster and easier to get started, as their CleO35 touchscreen display for Arduino UNO will come with a 20 chapter tutorial covering over 80 topics, and 20 projects to get started. Some of the key features and specs of Cleo35 display include: MCU – FTDI FT903 32-bit FT32 core @ 100MHz with 256kB on-chip Flash […]
Arduino Tian Board Combines Atmel D21 MCU, Atheros AR9342 WiSoC, and CSR8510 Bluetooth 4.0 SoC
Arduino Tian is an update of Arduino Yun board, mainly replacing Atmel ATMega32u4 8-bit MCU and Atheros AR9331 WiSoC with more recent Atmel SAMD21 32-bit Cortex M0 MCU and Atheros AR9342 WiSoC with support for dual band 802.11 b/g/n WiFi, as well as CSR8510 Bluetooth 4.0 SoC. Arduino Tian specifications: MCU part MCU – Atmel SAMD21G18 ARM Cortex-M0 MCU @ 48 MHz with 256KB flash and 32KB SRAM Digital I/O Pins – 20x GPIOs with 12x PWM and UART Analog Input Pins – 6x 12-bit ADC channels Analog Output Pins – 1x 10-bit DAC DC Current per I/0 – 7mA Operating Voltage – 3.3V “Linux” SoC part SoC – Atheros AR9342 MIPS74Kc processor @ 535 MHz System Memory 64MB DDR2 Storage – 16 MB Flash for firmware, 4 GB eMMC Flash for data Connectivity – 10/100M Ethernet, dual band 802.11n 2×2 2.4/5 GHz WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0 + EDR (CSR8510) USB […]
Samsung Artik IoT Boards and Devkits with WiFi, Bluetooth LE, and Zigbee Available, Partners Announced
Samsung Artik IoT boards will finally start selling on February 22 via Digikey. With the many fascinating developments in the IoT space over the year, you’d be forgiven if you completely forgot about Samsung Artik boards. So let’s have a quick recap. The Korean company previously announced three boards all supporting Bluetooth LE: Artik 1 – Ineda Systems Dual Core microAptiv MIPS32 processor with 1MB on-chip RAM, no GPU, and 4MB SPI flash Artik 5 – Dual core Exynos ARM processor @ 1GHz with ARM Mali 400 MP2 GPU, 512MB RAM and 4GB eMMC flash (both on-chip), with WiFi & Zigbee/Thread connectivity Artik 10 – Octa core Exynos processor with 4x ARM Cortex A15 @ 1.3GHz, 4x ARM Cortex A7 @ 1.0 GHz with ARM Mali-T628 GPU, 2GB LPDDR3 (on-chip), 16GB eMMC flash, and WiFi & Zigbee/Thread connectivity Samsung also partnered with multiple companies working on: Operating Systems – Tizen, […]