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DUE this month: the future of Arduino?

fustini

I had an amazing time at World Maker Faire New York 2012 this past weekend, and one of the exciting pieces of news is that the Arduino DUE will be available on October 22nd for $49 (plus taxes).  Massimo made the announcement during his "The Arduino Hour" talk along with Alf-Egil of Atmel:

 

 

The DUE is powered by a 84 MHz ARM Cortex M3 from Atmel and will be compatible with all shields that were made according to the Uno r3 spec.  However, since the architecture is no longer AVR, some shield libraries will need to be modified.

image

I caught Massimo's DUE demonstration later on where he showed how easy it is to use a USB mouse with the library they've developed.  He didn't show any other code examples, so it remains to be seen if the power of this new Arduino can be easily accessed by novice users.  These been many attempts to bring the Arduino beyond AVR in the past with limited success in my opinion.  I'm hopeful that Arduino can now make the jump to ARM successfully as the Arduino core team is now onboard.

 

So I'm wondering what our Arduino group here thinks about this development.  Is the price point good?  Is it reasonable to expect the same ease of use that is the hallmark of AVR-based Arduino?

 

Cheers,

Drew

  • Hi Drew,

     

    Lucky guy to be at such an awesome event!!

     

    I don't know about the price point, given that TI has an 80MHz ARM4 "Stellaris Launchpad" for just 5 bucks: http://www.ti.com/ww/en/launchpad/stellaris_head.html?DCMP=stellaris-launchpad&HQS=stellaris-launchpad-b

     

    For me the only thing that would make me consider the DUE is the ease of use that comes with the Arduino software and libraries, so I would definitely expect the same ease of use that I enjoy in the existing Arduinos.

    However, I hear that TI and the launchpad community are making some good strides there too. And for 5 dollars I would likely look there first.

     

    I don't know how the DUE compares to the Stellaris Launchpad in terms of capabilities, so that could ultimately make the decision, especially if a project needs something specific. I'll have to check out the video when I have an hour to spare later image

     

    Thanks for the update!

    Cheers,

    -Nico