Has a schematic or block diagram been released for the Arduino Due? I haven't found one with a quick search. I'd also be very interested to take a look at the bootloader source code if that is available.
Arduino announces its first ARM-based prototyping board, the Arduino Due
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Re: Arduino announces its first ARM-based prototyping board, the Arduino Due
#22Hmm, I'm not sure whether an ARM board is really a good idea. For most applications, a normal Arduino is easily sufficient. For anything more complicated, you can buy an ARM board running Linux (e.g the upcoming Raspberry Pi [1] for $25-$35). Arduinos are primarily used for education and prototyping. Programming raw ARM chips makes sense if you build a small series of specialized devices and want to keep costs down.…
There is a big difference between a Cortex-M3 and whatever is powering the Raspberry Pi. It's intended as an 8-bit microcontroller replacement. I've recently switched from TI MSP430 processors to this same Cortex-M3 from Atmel and performance has increased while per unit cost has gone down.
Correct. The ARM M series doesn't even have floating point hardware. The M3 is intended for real-time, low power applications, and is indeed a fantastic replacement for 8 or 16bit microcontrollers.
Re: Arduino announces its first ARM-based prototyping board, the Arduino Due
#23Hmm, I'm not sure whether an ARM board is really a good idea. For most applications, a normal Arduino is easily sufficient. For anything more complicated, you can buy an ARM board running Linux (e.g the upcoming Raspberry Pi [1] for $25-$35). Arduinos are primarily used for education and prototyping. Programming raw ARM chips makes sense if you build a small series of specialized devices and want to keep costs down.…
There is a big difference between a Cortex-M3 and whatever is powering the Raspberry Pi. It's intended as an 8-bit microcontroller replacement. I've recently switched from TI MSP430 processors to this same Cortex-M3 from Atmel and performance has increased while per unit cost has gone down.
Thanks for the clarification.
Is there really much demand for such a board?
Re: Arduino announces its first ARM-based prototyping board, the Arduino Due
#24Hmm, I'm not sure whether an ARM board is really a good idea. For most applications, a normal Arduino is easily sufficient. For anything more complicated, you can buy an ARM board running Linux (e.g the upcoming Raspberry Pi [1] for $25-$35). Arduinos are primarily used for education and prototyping. Programming raw ARM chips makes sense if you build a small series of specialized devices and want to keep costs down.…
There is a big difference between a Cortex-M3 and whatever is powering the Raspberry Pi. It's intended as an 8-bit microcontroller replacement. I've recently switched from TI MSP430 processors to this same Cortex-M3 from Atmel and performance has increased while per unit cost has gone down.
The Cortex-M3 microcontrollers are awesome. Much more powerful than the older 8-bit architectures available at the same price, and amenable to industry-standard tools instead of just the compilers and IDE sold by the manufacturer. I think this move just mirrors the general industry trend toward the ARM architecture. It's become difficult to justify using one of the old 8-bit architectures anymore, except at the lowest extremes of price or power consumption.
Re: Arduino announces its first ARM-based prototyping board, the Arduino Due
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is a big difference between a Cortex-M3 and whatever is powering the Raspberry Pi. It's intended as an 8-bit microcontroller replacement. I've recently switched from TI MSP430 processors to this same Cortex-M3 from Atmel and performance has increased while per unit cost has gone down.
Thanks for the clarification. Is there really much demand for such a board?
I want one, and I know several others that will as well. The 32-bit Cortex-M3 core at 96 MHz leaves an AVR in the dust; it has low-power modes that make power consumption comparable; and the peripheral set advantage of the AT91SAM3U over an ATmega is huge.
Also, ARM Thumb2 is a much nicer instruction set than AVR in my humble opinion. Cortex-M3 also has some great instructions to improve the efficiency of real-time preemptive kernels (e.g. RBIT, CLZ and automatic pushing of registers on interrupt). I've written my own tiny kernel for this microcontroller, and I'll definitely be putting it up on github since this release increases the likelihood that others will contribute to it.
Also, Cortex Microcontroller Software Interface Standard (CMSIS) [1] makes porting between vendor's offerings (e.g. STM32 or Stellaris) much easier than going from say AVR to MSP430.
[1] http://www.arm.com/products/processors/cortex-m/cortex-micro...
Re: Arduino announces its first ARM-based prototyping board, the Arduino Due
#26The 12-bit A/D is a step up. Anyone know the projected unit cost for one of these? The processor alone is ~$10 (individually)
Also, the specs are a bit misleading. The 16 ADC are broken down into half 12-bit and half 10-bit inputs. The article makes it sound like all 16 ADC lines are 12 bits while only 8 of them are.
Re: Arduino announces its first ARM-based prototyping board, the Arduino Due
#27Hmm, I'm not sure whether an ARM board is really a good idea. For most applications, a normal Arduino is easily sufficient. For anything more complicated, you can buy an ARM board running Linux (e.g the upcoming Raspberry Pi [1] for $25-$35). Arduinos are primarily used for education and prototyping. Programming raw ARM chips makes sense if you build a small series of specialized devices and want to keep costs down.…
I'm more interested in the Leonardo with the 32u4 chip myself. Much smaller than the Arduino, simpler circuit, built-in USB for higher data transfer bandwidth and comes with lots of A/D's. The 32u4 has been _the_ chip for low-cost projects that involve communication with a computer for some time now (Adafruit and PJRC [Teensy] make one), but Arduino is going to bring it to a bigger audience. The Teensy already worked with Arduino libraries, but the boot loader wasn't free and it wasn't 'officially supported'.
Re: Arduino announces its first ARM-based prototyping board, the Arduino Due
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
The distance between the two rows of pin headers on each side is not a multiple of 0.1". This means that every shield that you attach to the Arduino needs to have this same strange spacing between the rows of pin headers. You cannot just use a normal perfboard. As all Arduino shields have the same weird spacing, fixing this design flaw would require everyone to buy new shields. There are Arduino clones that add corre…
Couldn't they make an adapter?
Apparently a someone does. http://www.sparkfun.com/products/9374
From raphman's link
Re: Arduino announces its first ARM-based prototyping board, the Arduino Due
#29If this is the first ARM-based Arduino, what was the Arduino chip based on that Google used at I/O for that accessory API thing? Was it a regular (but smaller) Arduino?
It uses an ATmega2560. Still an 8-bit AVR but has more memory and USB host functionality.