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.”
Comments
Where is it said that open source makes things cheaper, or pushes back constraints? Some generalization are made regarding open source (software) in general, and the costs to businesses with regard to computing, and some statements and observations are made there, but as far as hardware goes (apples to apples) I'm not aware of these concepts as being part of the central benefits envisioned from the start. If anything, they are long-minded predictions, I do not consider them part of the reality or current focus of open source hardware advocates.
I think, bGatti, you have very valid observations; but the strength of open source is not in the areas you have raised, it can be seen most clearly in this situation. If you have the interest, you can take the work of others, the collective efforts used to create this Ardunio thing, with all the flaws you see, and you can work with the community and developers to improve it. But there is more. As we are human, and as we each have different needs and prejudices, we can never all agree what is ideal. So fork it. You can do either or both, the first, if you chose, and if others accept your contributions, the latter, if you chose, and if they do not.
But I am not certain that this is the best thread for such a dialog as I have offered in this reply. I value bGatti's input, I think he has a lot of useful perspectives and would make a good engineer on the Arduino (or similar) micro controller development team, as a developer or as a requirements-driver. I think his discussion of the issues are more valid to this thread than my comments here, which I offer only this once, but would be willing to discuss elsewhere.
chris anderson:
so a new version with 32bit processor will be release for the next year if i understand!
good news!!
The Arduino team has said they new boards will not be out in final form until the end of the year, and we're not releasing anything until they do.
Eh... sorry to poke my nooby nose into a high level and hopefully important discussion.
I just want to know if this means that I could do well with waiting to update my 1280 board to a 2560? (I bought the 1280 just before the 2560 came out and haven't even gotten beyond the HIL stage as I got myself a quad in the meantime)
Should I maybe skip the 2560 and just try to use the 1280 for my winged drone until this ARM-thing comes out?
I'm so happy the $10 ARM will support debug - raising the price to $40 in the bargain I'm sure.
The point is I already have proper debug at 2 orders of magnitude cheaper, and I have had it since 2009.
I use Arduinos, not because they are well designed, but because they are ubiquitous, and I take no pride in promoting a platform which in my opinion, delivers an inferior experience.
At some point - the era of enlightenment will dawn, and people will look back on the Arduino as an inexplicable oddity and say the equivalent of "You had Kant, but you chose Luther"?
Open Source is supposed to push back the constraints - but Arduino is a tightening noose of constraints:
With a PicKit2 for example, I can place any of 30 chips from 8 pins to >20 on THE SAME BOARD: Choice!
Open Source is supposed to reduce cost:
With PicKit2, I can pay $0.50 to $3 per chip - 1 to nearly 2 orders of magnitude cheaper than "Open Source."
Linus has explicitly avoided the contagion of Open Source - whilst being its main supporter. He uses (/ed?) bitkeeper - a closed project - as source control because it is the better tool.
He's a prediction: Arduino won't survive the leap to ARM; there are many excellent ARM boards ($25), and the Arduino environment isn't by far the best or easiest or most stable IDE (thanks to pseudo-comm) - for even the smallest program. If the quality of design decisions thus far is any indication, or this pattern of making bad decisions early, and doubling down on them later persists; or finally, if the community is so eager to blindly worship open source - even if it arrives without any of the benefits thereof - that worship will itself have a dysmorphic effect on the project, like the poor child whose parents fawn over shis singing - then ends up a spectacle in the first weeks of American Idol (or country of your choice).
This isn't to be unsupportive: Consumer Reports (and Wired Mag) elevates the design of the products they review (see Friedman: Hot, Flat and Crowded), and denigrates by extension, those products on which they lie silent.
I was raised to believe in invisible little flying people who make people do things - and came at some point to disbelieve the nonesuch - and to hold it against those people who should have known better, but instead doubled down on their superstitions. At some point we have to ask whether or not the emperor isn't likewise going commando? The argument that Arduino is the opiate of the masses certainly doesn't help.
BG.
@Scott Plunkett This is exactly how I found DIYDrones and got interested in UAVs and even plain old RC. I have coded a little bit in Object C and RealBasic. I came across Arduino and read some sample code and thought, hey I can do that. Picked up some Arduino stuff and started to learn some of it and this eventually lead me to the DIYDrones site and got me interested here.
I did a very simple Arduino for work that power cycles wifi modems at midnight every night. Yes very simple and I could be considered one of those blinky lights people but I learned something new and had fun doing it. We saved money in the process because it was cheaper then buying a power strip to do the same thing and we don't have to send someone driving 4 hours to a remote site to do the same thing to get telemetry back.
All I'm saying is Arduino got someone interested in microcontrollers/electronics that might now otherwise have done so.
bGatti > sorry, I can't ear you trolling over the sound of all the people doing awesome (even if pointless most of the time) projects with Arduino boards, can you speak louder?
TL;DR: technology democratization & adoption > technological purity
bGatti, I hear you but I don't think you have full insight into what's coming. The new ARM-based Arduinos will support proper hardware debugging and an RTOS (Betos).
Massimo has apologized many times (including this week) for his original pitch mistake. At some point, you've just got to let it go ;-)
The main problem as I see it is that Arduino's main focus is to introducing micro-controllers to the masses. And they have been doing a very good job at that. But at the same time this focus on beginners means they have different needs compared to the hardware requirements of a autopilot project.
Uh Thanks Michael;
now the question...
Why would anyone expect a design group which can't line up 11 pins in a practical manner to negotiate this labyrinth of choices?
Handsome is as handsome does, and does and does.
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