Arduino Project Upgrades With 2 New Boards 113
EqualSlash writes "The Arduino Project is releasing two new boards — Arduino Uno to replace Duemilanove and Arduino Mega 2560 to replace the existing Arduino Mega board. With Uno, the board is not just getting a new pronunciation-friendly name but also has a custom-made USB-serial converter to replace the older FTDI chipset, thereby removing the need to install drivers (they now have their own USB Vendor ID). It now has a logo and stylish packaging, and soon will have its own branded web store. A new Ethernet integrated board and a tinkering toolkit will be made available shortly."
The netduino has been updated as well. (Score:1, Informative)
Re:New custom chipset...with no drivers? (Score:5, Informative)
It probably uses a class that requires no drivers.
Every new thumbdrive out there doesn't need a new driver, and they manage with new VID/PIDs all the time... because they all flag themselves in the Mass Storage class.
And we care because? (Score:4, Informative)
And the people who don't need the hype (Score:2, Informative)
...can still get Atmel Atmega8 chips for two dollars a piece and do everything the Arduinos do. These microcontrollers literally need no external hardware other than a power supply.
Re:And we care because? (Score:5, Informative)
The Arduino system is a development kit around Atmel Mega8 microcontrollers. It makes microcontroller development simpler for those without a background in programming or hardware design by providing easy programmability with a boot loader and an integrated USB to serial converter, ready-made "shields" (pluggable boards with specific functions) and a software environment which abstracts from some of the nastier aspects of microcontroller programming. It has got quite a fanbase in the "maker community".
Re:And we care because? (Score:5, Informative)
It's an awesome tool that makes interfacing with real equipment (lights, motors, sensors etc) easy for a software developer with minimum electrical engineering knowledge and some knowledge of C programming. After it's programmed, it can run on its own without a PC.
Re:And we care because? (Score:1, Informative)
You can do that with any PIC without any board. It just needs a power supply.
PICKit 3 or similar allow these chips to be programmed very easily. And no, I'm not an electrical engineer. But I know a resistor from a capacitor! :P
Re:And the people who don't need the hype (Score:3, Informative)
I actually have a few, already soldered up and tested. I made a mistake with the hole size for the IC pin headers that go into the protoboard, so I needed to drill those holes to fit the pins. The ISP header holes are just fine, though.
I'll be putting those on eBay in a few days, just search "attiny85" and you should find it (currently only two results on eBay.com, for the IC only).
FYI, I connect to the ISP header via the old STK500, I have no idea if it will work with anything else, but all six pins of the ISP header are wired to the correct pins for the ATtiny25/45/85.
It's very similar to the one from Tinkerlog [tinkerlog.com] but with only the ISP header and a small capacitor between the power pins (hidden under an IC socket to take less room). I'd say it's roughly half the size of the Tinkerlog one.
Re:And the people who don't need the hype (Score:4, Informative)
You can even get just the chip (in a DIP package if you wish) programmed with the bootloader for about $5.00.
Re:The netduino has been updated as well. (Score:3, Informative)
Dotnet micro is under the apache 2.0 license.
Fully open source under a certified license.
What are you complaining about?
Re:And we care because? (Score:4, Informative)
Those with a programming and hardware background, too :-) Once you get used to the pin-numbering abstraction, it's a real suck-saver for quick n dirty / one-off / non-production projects. The entire Arduino project, toolchain and most users' projects are open-source, and it's its own bootloader! One of the Mechies calls up and needs a quick test fixture to cycle a valve once per minute and log a sensor reading for the next several weeks. I can grab someone's microSD-FAT library off the internet and cobble something together in the time it takes to figure out whose desk the PIC programmer is hiding under this week and where the license code for their C (not C++) compiler went.
Re:And we care because? (Score:4, Informative)
Arduino is a platform based on some minimal hardware wrapped around the Atmel AVR microcontrollers. It makes it very easy to slap the AVR into the middle of a design (especially if you use the Arduino Nano, which is designed to be conveniently breadboard-socketable) and actually get something done with it, like read some sensors or flash some LEDs, or perhaps read some sensors and flash the LEDs based on the input. Indeed, you can load the Arduino bootloader into sufficiently capable AVR processors and use their programming environment, libraries, etc. Arduino devices understand how to read many common sensors and control many common devices, including R/C car servo-motors. All this makes them an extremely common basis for small robotics projects. As well, Arduino devices are extremely inexpensive, and the microcontrollers upon which they are based even moreso.
But that wasn't very hard to begin with, and what's REALLY super-cool about Arduino is the idea of "Shields", which are sub-boards of hardware designed to be interfaced with an Arduino simply by plugging it in, and which are provided with the code necessary to utilize them. Thus, adding some functionality to an Arduino project can take one of two forms: you can build it out yourself and interface it, or you can simply buy someone else's premade "Shield", plug it in, and use their code to interface to the hardware.
Shields generally utilize Free and Open designs and so you get all the source and the full schematic. This means that while you can use Arduino for making finished products, you can also use it for rapid prototyping, then take the (Free, Open) Arduino schematic, combine it with the (Free, Open) schematic(s) of the shield(s) that you used, and send the whole thing off to get made into a permanent PCB for your own product. This in turn permits someone with programming ability but little to no electronics ability to produce finished products with semi-custom hardware.
Shields exist for a broad variety of functions, and generally they add input and/or output to a design. There are shields to control relays, and shields which can be used to determine how much power is flowing through them. There are LED blinking shields, Ethernet shields, sensor-control shields, ZigBee wireless mesh networking, video output, you name it. And anyone can produce any of this stuff from the designs, modified or not. Arduino is open hardware for the masses today, albeit a bit limited in processing power. However, it can always be linked to a more powerful computer; it has RS232 onboard (one of the tricks that Atmel teaches you to do with their AVR when you get the dev kit, in fact) and most designs include a USB to RS232 adapter which both powers the device and permits communication.
There is probably a much better way to summarize all of this, it could be a lot shorter, but I've never typed a full missive on what it is. Maybe someday this highly redundant piece of text can be used to train machine language or something :D
Re:New custom chipset...with no drivers? (Score:3, Informative)