Developer Comment by R_Lefebvre on October 3, 2012 at 7:45am

I'm looking forward to it.  As a beginner programmer, I really appreciate the ease of use of the Arduino platform.  Hardcore guys find it limited and all manner of other negative adjectives.  But for me, I like the ease of writing a program (using an easy language) and then plugging it into my computer with a USB cable and programming it.

No FTDI cables or AVR programmers.  No need for a Linux operating system. No fuss.  It just works.

It does what it was set out to do, and that is bring the potential of micro-controllers to non-programmers. 

I'm curious... the 16MHz Atmega processor timing precision is limited to 4uS.  It's pretty good for most applications, but it limits the maximum RPM which you measure to about 150,000rpm assuming 1 pulse per revolution, for example.  Any idea how much faster the new processor will be?

Basically what I'm getting at is the Arduino micros() function has a precision of 4uS.  With the ARM, will we get a nano() function?

Comment by Luke Olson on October 3, 2012 at 7:58am

Is there a roadmap for the various projects available? For example I was not aware that ArduCopter was in the process of being ported to the PX4. Seeing the Arduino platform expand to other processors is very exciting!

Comment by Dror Caspi on October 3, 2012 at 10:37am

As an experienced software engineer, I personally think that Arducopter has long ago grown well beyond what should run on an Arduino.  Software-wise, Arducopter should have been based on an RTOS.  Hardware-wise, it should have been freed from all the limitations of the 8 bit AVR processor.

Or, more bluntly said, a project the size & complexity of Arducopter is not for novice programmers!

So, unless I'm mistaken and Arduino Due will include an RTOS, I believe that forcing compatiblity with Arduino will serve no good to this project.

Dror

Comment by Veikko Vierola on October 3, 2012 at 10:43am

Is the ardupilot or arducopter code need to be changed if the processor is changed to Cortex-M3? Or can u just use the same code with much higher calculation speed?

Developer Comment by R_Lefebvre on October 3, 2012 at 11:09am

Veikko, just a guess, but I would think they are setting it up that older sketches can be uploaded to the new board with little issue.  There are exceptions, but that seems to be how the other boards were built.  You only run into problem such as... if you make a program for a Mega, which has 4 UARTS, and you use UARTS 2, 3, or 4, and then you try to compile it for a 328, you'll get an error because the other UARTS don't exist.  Ditto if you assign functions to pins on a Mega, that don't exist on a 328.

I have no idea how many UARTS the ARM will have, or if it will have more or less I/O pins than the Mega.

Developer Comment by R_Lefebvre on October 3, 2012 at 11:16am

Hmmm...  it looks like the Due will have the same number of I/O pins as Mega.  So that's good. But I'm surprised that it only has 256k of flash memory.  The same as Mega. We're already knocking on that door with Arducopter so there's not a lot of room for expansion on this?

Moderator Comment by Roberto Navoni on October 3, 2012 at 11:55am

I don't think that is an a big improvment the px4 and vbrain use micro controller with more resource , 1 Mbyte Flash 192 kbyte ram and an integrated FPU ... so why downgrade to arduino due ... that's an option ... but not so interesting ... i think that we need to investigate more on Linux based embedded systems for expansion of our project as raspberry .... I'm working on a new interesting linux based platform for expand our great drone ....

3D Robotics Comment by Chris Anderson on October 3, 2012 at 11:59am

Robert: at 45:00 in the above video, Massimo says it has 512k flash memory and 64k RAM.

 

Also, in David Mellis' presentation earlier in that speech, he points out that the new Arduino IDE is designed to support a wide range of hardware. Right now they're starting with the Atmel M3 chips, but it will support other manufactures and architectures (such as ST and ARM 7/9) easily.

3D Robotics Comment by Chris Anderson on October 3, 2012 at 12:05pm

I've updated the post with a PDF of technical specs. the Flash is 96k (64k + 32K) and it can support 2MB of dataflash.

Comment by Veikko Vierola on October 3, 2012 at 12:14pm

So is the arducopter/plane code then loaded to the 2MB dataflash card and the actual active processing is done with the 64k + 32k memory chip? Can it process the rest of the code data from the 2MB data flash card fast enough? (BTW is it a 2MB flash card or some sort of soldered chip?)

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