ARM Arduino Coming!

Hot off the wires (needless to say, ArduPilot will be part of this. 32-bit, 100Mhz, yum!):

Atmel and Arduino Collaborate on

AVR and ARM-based Development Platforms

See the latest platforms based on Atmel products in the Atmel-sponsored Arduino Pavilion located in Queens, New York, September 17 and 18
Listen to Atmel Open Source Community Manager Eric Weddington present “Open Source AVR Toolchain Past, Present and Future” at 2:00 pm PT on September 17 and 18 in the ‘Make Live Stage’ at the Maker Faire

San Jose, CA, September 16, 2011 – Atmel^®Corporation (NASDAQ: ATML), a leader in microcontroller and touch solutions, and Arduino, the leading open-source electronics prototyping platform and community, announced they are collaborating on several development boards usingAtmel AVR and ARM-based microcontroller (MCU) products. The new easy-to-use Arduino boards use several Atmel products including the Cortex-M3-based SAM3U MCU, ATmega32U4 and AVR UC3 MCUs.

Arduino is an open-source, community-based prototyping platform that offers accessible hardware and well-documented software to electronics enthusiasts. The community encompasses artists, designers, students, kids, hobbyists and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments. Committed to offering the shortest learning curve, Arduino has developed several boards featuring Atmel’s AVR and ARM-based MCUs leveraging its complete, flexible software and hardware environments.

Atmel and Arduino will be demonstrating several platforms in the Atmel-sponsored Arduino Pavilion including:

Arduino Leonardo. Based on the Atmel ATmega32U4, it is a low-cost Arduino board which includes a simpler circuit as the Arduino UNO board. The software on the board includes a USB driver that can simulate a mouse, keyboard and serial port. In addition, the bootloader includes a serial port and USB mass storage driver.
Arduino Due. The newest board to Arduino’s collection, the Arduino Due is based on an Atmel Cortex-M3-based microcontroller, also known as the Atmel SAM3U ARM-based MCU. This MCU can run up to 96MHz and will be available to the Arduino community by the end of 2011.
Arduino WiFi. This board is for hobbyists interested in WiFi applications. Arduino WiFi includes an add-on module using the Atmel AVR MCU and an H&D Wireless module that provides developers with a powerful WiFi interface.

“Arduino is a grass roots community that has been working with Atmel AVR products since its inception,” said Massimo Banzi, founder of the Arduino Community. “We are thrilled to use Atmel’s ARM-based products for the first time in our latest development platforms. The new boards, based on the Atmel SAM3U ARM-based MCUs, include a complete, flexible eco-system that provides our community of developers with access to the most sophisticated, yet easy-to-use platforms for designing innovative and fun electronics devices,” Banzi concluded.

“We are excited to be a sponsor of the Arduino Pavilion at the Maker Faire,” said Alf Egil-Bogen, chief marketing officer, Atmel Corporation. “The Arduino community reaches a large group of university and hobbyist communities focused on developing new designs. We’ve seen this community grow from grass roots to a well-established organization of true enthusiasts and hobbyists. We are excited to work with Arduino on a variety of different projects in the future.”

bGatti,

I wrote the rest of this post before I realized there were multiple pages to the thread, but after reading all 6 it still seems relevant. I thought your original points were valid, and they continued to be insightful as the thread continued. With that in mind, what follows is my $.02 on why arduino continues to be my preferred dev platform:

"The Arduino became a huge success almost overnight where other development boards had nearly a decade with mediocre receptions.

The question isn't what the Arduino does wrong, because most embedded programmers can give you a laundry list. The question is what did it do right, and what competing product does those things and more?

If there is a superior alternative: What is it, and why hasn't it replaced Arduino? It's the second part to that question that interests me, because I've been very open to alternatives and yet none of them have made a convert out of me.

I'm toying with an STM32F4 Discovery board right now, and it's better than the arduino in every possible way, except it takes me 2 minutes to make an analog voltage drive a servo motor with the arduino, and it took me several weeks to even monitor ADC pins on the STM32F4. This is after I went to an entire day of "training" (READ: sales pitch/datasheet-reading party) from the manufacturer.

I gave up on the MSP430 Launchpad almost immediately. If I have to do crazy shit with system clocks to even generate a pwm signal, a slightly reduced power consumption & BoM isn't going to recuperate my development time.

I'm not a computer scientist, and I'm not an electrical engineer. I can program an Arduino with zero training, and I can't seem to do the same with any of the competitors I've tried. If you've got the training & skills to have other options that's great. For those of us that don't, the arduino gives us the capability to get results while we're still slaving away on the competing platform's documentation learning curve."

If I had to guess, I would say the Arduino bootloader, IDE, & the programming language are the true successful products, with compatible hardware simply being a means to an end. It's why I'm totally apathetic on Arduino Uno/Pro Mini/Mega. The hardware is driven by convenience and I've never been big on shields anyway.

I stick with the arduino brand because the compiler is free, the language is easy, and there are enough compatible development boards for me to accomplish 99% of what I need from an MCU. The only reason I'm even looking at ARM processors right now is I need a faster ADC sample rate for a project & even then I'm considering giving up and going back to an arduino IDE compatible atXmega128A1.

http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1265563522/15

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Comments

Cool Dude March 28, 2012 at 11:31am

I have been waiting for the ARM arduino for far too long. Arduino had a press release with a picture of the ARM arduino. Still it is not out. I was wondering what could be the reason for this. Does any one has any information as to when can we expect this.

Thanks
Gerry Lichter January 16, 2012 at 9:55pm

bGatti,

I wrote the rest of this post before I realized there were multiple pages to the thread, but after reading all 6 it still seems relevant. I thought your original points were valid, and they continued to be insightful as the thread continued. With that in mind, what follows is my $.02 on why arduino continues to be my preferred dev platform:

"The Arduino became a huge success almost overnight where other development boards had nearly a decade with mediocre receptions.

The question isn't what the Arduino does wrong, because most embedded programmers can give you a laundry list. The question is what did it do right, and what competing product does those things and more?

If there is a superior alternative: What is it, and why hasn't it replaced Arduino? It's the second part to that question that interests me, because I've been very open to alternatives and yet none of them have made a convert out of me.

I'm toying with an STM32F4 Discovery board right now, and it's better than the arduino in every possible way, except it takes me 2 minutes to make an analog voltage drive a servo motor with the arduino, and it took me several weeks to even monitor ADC pins on the STM32F4. This is after I went to an entire day of "training" (READ: sales pitch/datasheet-reading party) from the manufacturer.

I gave up on the MSP430 Launchpad almost immediately. If I have to do crazy shit with system clocks to even generate a pwm signal, a slightly reduced power consumption & BoM isn't going to recuperate my development time.

I'm not a computer scientist, and I'm not an electrical engineer. I can program an Arduino with zero training, and I can't seem to do the same with any of the competitors I've tried. If you've got the training & skills to have other options that's great. For those of us that don't, the arduino gives us the capability to get results while we're still slaving away on the competing platform's documentation learning curve."

If I had to guess, I would say the Arduino bootloader, IDE, & the programming language are the true successful products, with compatible hardware simply being a means to an end. It's why I'm totally apathetic on Arduino Uno/Pro Mini/Mega. The hardware is driven by convenience and I've never been big on shields anyway.

I stick with the arduino brand because the compiler is free, the language is easy, and there are enough compatible development boards for me to accomplish 99% of what I need from an MCU. The only reason I'm even looking at ARM processors right now is I need a faster ADC sample rate for a project & even then I'm considering giving up and going back to an arduino IDE compatible atXmega128A1.

http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1265563522/15
Developer

Adam Rivera January 16, 2012 at 7:30pm

Chris: Ok, sounds good. Its exciting to say the least!s
3D Robotics

Chris Anderson January 16, 2012 at 7:17pm

Adam: the ARM version of Arduino is not yet publicly available (our team is working with proto dev boards). The IDE will be a version of standard Arduino, but is also not available yet.
Developer

Adam Rivera January 16, 2012 at 7:11pm

Chris, I would like to get involved. Is there a different IDE for the ARM Arduino boards? I just want to poke around and see if I can port any code to run in the RTOS environment.
ThomasB September 20, 2011 at 5:12am

If you really want a next generation platform now,

there might be an additional option in some weeks:

http://www.diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/autoquad-version-6-1
ThomasB September 20, 2011 at 5:03am

@Andre

The new Software will not work with the old hadware.

There will be a new Operating System in it. The old Atmel is not capable to work it.

The new design will be much faster, so it's possible to work with more accurate 'math' for attitude calculation and sensor data capturing.

By the way, the old hardware has a lot of very nice and tested functions. So it's always the point what you want to do with it.

If you only want to fly, the old hardware might be the best today. If you want to program yourself you have to decide if you prefer traditonal ArduCode or new Code Function with more possibilities.

If you want a high stable Flight platform and you have a lot time (months, or a year ;) the new plattform might be better
DaveyWaveyBunsenBurner September 20, 2011 at 4:58am

In my experience the DIYD team will create a final version for the old 8-bit boards. Past that point, future releases will be bug fixes only. I still fly my old Ardupilot 2.71 release quite happily, and I know of several other people on here that do to.

Of course, I am not DIYD development team, so this is my opinion only.
Andre B. September 20, 2011 at 4:55am

@thomasb & @daveywaveybunsenburner

thank you very much for your opinions :-). Do you have any experience with software compatibility? I guess changes like this have been done earlier and i try to figure out if new software releases will still work with the "old" ardupilot or if this will be a dead-end track ...
DaveyWaveyBunsenBurner September 20, 2011 at 4:44am

@Andre

As ThomasB said, this is a way off yet. I would guess the best part of a year, there is a LOT of work to do before the new boards will be readily available and the software out of Beta.

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