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Archive for the ‘pozible’ Category

Apr
19

Goldilocks: an Arduino Clone

arduino, Arduino Clone, crowdfunding, Electronics, Freeduino, goldilocks, pozible Commenti disabilitati su Goldilocks: an Arduino Clone 

The GoldilocksEver battled SRAM limitations with your sketch on the Arduino Uno? Decided reluctantly to break out an Arduino Mega, and suffer with the resulting shield incompatibilities? Then the new Goldilocks board might be just what you're looking for in a micro-controller.

Read the full article on MAKE

Mar
18

Introducing Goldilocks – the Arduino Uno-compatible with 1284p and uSD card

arduino, atmega1284p, atmel, bootloader, compatible, freetronics, goldilocks, kickstarter, pozible, tronixstuff, uno Commenti disabilitati su Introducing Goldilocks – the Arduino Uno-compatible with 1284p and uSD card 

[Update 19/03/2013 - the project is now fully funded. When the boards arrive we'll do a full review]

Introduction

It’s a solid fact that there are quite a few variations on the typical Arduino Uno-compatible board. You can get them with onboard wireless, GSM, Zigbee and more – however all with their own issues and specific purposes. But what if you wanted a board that was physically and electrically compatible with an Arduino Uno – but with much more SRAM, more EEPROM, more flash, more speed – and then some? Well that (hopefully) will be a possibility with the introduction of the “Goldilocks” board on Pozible by Phillip Stevens.

What’s Pozible?

Pozible is the Australian version of Kickstarter. However just like KS anyone with a credit card or PayPal can pledge and support projects.

What’s a Goldilocks board?

It’s a board based around the Atmel ATmega1284p microcontroller in an Arduino Uno-compatible physical board with a microSD card socket and a few extras. The use of the ’1284p gives us the following advantages over the Arduino Uno, including:

  • 16 kByte SRAM = 8x Uno SRAM – so that’s much more space for variables used in sketches – great for applications that use larger frame buffers such as Ethernet and image work;
  • 2 kByte EEPROM = 2 x Uno EEPROM – giving you more space for non-volatile data storage on the main board;
  • 128 kByte flash memory = 4 x Uno – giving you much, much more room for those larger sketches;
  • Two programmable USARTS – in other words, two hardware serial ports – no mucking about with SoftwareSerial and GSM or GPS shields;
  • Timer 3 – the ’1284p microcontroller has an extra 16-bit timer – timer 3, that is not present on any other ATmega microcontroller. Timer 3 does not have PWM outputs (unlike Timer 0, Timer 1, and Timer 2), and therefore is free to use as a powerful internal Tick counter, for example in a RTOS. freeRTOS has already been modified to utilise this Timer 3;
  • JTAG interface – yes – allowing more advanced developers the opportunity to debug their code;
  • better PWM access – the 1284p brings additional 8-bit Timer 2 PWM outputs onto PD, which creates the option for 2 additional PWM options on this port. It also removes the sharing of the important 16-bit PWM pins with the SPI interface, by moving them to PD4 & PD5, thus simplifying interface assignments;
  • Extra I/O pins – the 1284p has additional digital I/O pins on the PB port. These pins could be utilised for on-board Slave Select pins (for example), without stealing on-header digital pins and freeing the Arduino Pin 10 for Shield SPI SS use exclusively;

Furthermore the following design improvements over an Arduino Uno:

  • adding through-holes for all I/O – allowing you to solder directly onto the board whilst keeping header sockets;
  • replicate SPI and I2C for ease of use;
  • microSD card socket – that’s a no-brainer;
  • link the ATmega16u2 and ATmega1284p SPI interfaces – this will allow the two devices to work in concert for demanding multi-processing applications, involving USB and other peripherals;
  • Fully independent analogue pins, including seperate AVCC and GND – helps reduce noise on the ADC channels for improved analogue measurement accuracy;
  • move the reset button to the edge of the board – another no-brainer
  • clock the board at 20 MHz – that’s an extra 4 MHz over a Uno. And the use of a through hole precision crystal (not a SMD resonator) allows the use of after market timing choices, eg 22.1184 MHz for more accurate UART timings.

What does it look like? 

At the moment the board mock-up looks like this:

If funding is successful (and we hope it will be) the Goldilocks will be manufactured by the team at Freetronics. Apart from being a world-leader in Arduino-compatible hardware and systems, they’re the people behind the hardware for Ardusat and more – so we know the Goldilocks will be in good hands.

Will it really be compatible?

Yes – the Goldilocks will be shipped pre-programmed with an Arduino compatible boot-loader, and the necessary Board description files will be available to provide a 100% compatible Arduino IDE experience.

Conclusion

If you think this kind of board would be useful in your projects, you want to support a good project – or both, head over to Pozible and make your pledge. And for the record – I’ve put my money where my mouth is :)

Please note that I’m not involved in nor responsible for the Goldilocks project, however I’m happy to promote it as a worthwhile endeavour. In the meanwhile have fun and keep checking into tronixstuff.com. Why not follow things on twitterGoogle+, subscribe  for email updates or RSS using the links on the right-hand column? And join our friendly Google Group – dedicated to the projects and related items on this website. Sign up – it’s free, helpful to each other –  and we can all learn something.


Mar
18

Introducing Goldilocks – the Arduino Uno-compatible with 1284p and uSD card

arduino, atmega1284p, atmel, bootloader, compatible, freetronics, goldilocks, kickstarter, pozible, tronixstuff, uno Commenti disabilitati su Introducing Goldilocks – the Arduino Uno-compatible with 1284p and uSD card 

[Update 19/08/2013 - Exciting! Boards are shipping this week - review to follow!]

[Update 19/03/2013 - the project is now fully funded. Initial review here!]

Introduction

It’s a solid fact that there are quite a few variations on the typical Arduino Uno-compatible board. You can get them with onboard wireless, GSM, Zigbee and more – however all with their own issues and specific purposes. But what if you wanted a board that was physically and electrically compatible with an Arduino Uno – but with much more SRAM, more EEPROM, more flash, more speed – and then some? Well that (hopefully) will be a possibility with the introduction of the “Goldilocks” board on Pozible by Phillip Stevens.

What’s Pozible?

Pozible is the Australian version of Kickstarter. However just like KS anyone with a credit card or PayPal can pledge and support projects.

What’s a Goldilocks board?

It’s a board based around the Atmel ATmega1284p microcontroller in an Arduino Uno-compatible physical board with a microSD card socket and a few extras. The use of the ’1284p gives us the following advantages over the Arduino Uno, including:

  • 16 kByte SRAM = 8x Uno SRAM – so that’s much more space for variables used in sketches – great for applications that use larger frame buffers such as Ethernet and image work;
  • 2 kByte EEPROM = 2 x Uno EEPROM – giving you more space for non-volatile data storage on the main board;
  • 128 kByte flash memory = 4 x Uno – giving you much, much more room for those larger sketches;
  • Two programmable USARTS – in other words, two hardware serial ports – no mucking about with SoftwareSerial and GSM or GPS shields;
  • Timer 3 – the ’1284p microcontroller has an extra 16-bit timer – timer 3, that is not present on any other ATmega microcontroller. Timer 3 does not have PWM outputs (unlike Timer 0, Timer 1, and Timer 2), and therefore is free to use as a powerful internal Tick counter, for example in a RTOS. freeRTOS has already been modified to utilise this Timer 3;
  • JTAG interface – yes – allowing more advanced developers the opportunity to debug their code;
  • better PWM access – the 1284p brings additional 8-bit Timer 2 PWM outputs onto PD, which creates the option for 2 additional PWM options on this port. It also removes the sharing of the important 16-bit PWM pins with the SPI interface, by moving them to PD4 & PD5, thus simplifying interface assignments;
  • Extra I/O pins – the 1284p has additional digital I/O pins on the PB port. These pins could be utilised for on-board Slave Select pins (for example), without stealing on-header digital pins and freeing the Arduino Pin 10 for Shield SPI SS use exclusively;

Furthermore the following design improvements over an Arduino Uno:

  • adding through-holes for all I/O – allowing you to solder directly onto the board whilst keeping header sockets;
  • replicate SPI and I2C for ease of use;
  • microSD card socket – that’s a no-brainer;
  • link the ATmega16u2 and ATmega1284p SPI interfaces – this will allow the two devices to work in concert for demanding multi-processing applications, involving USB and other peripherals;
  • Fully independent analogue pins, including seperate AVCC and GND – helps reduce noise on the ADC channels for improved analogue measurement accuracy;
  • move the reset button to the edge of the board – another no-brainer
  • clock the board at 20 MHz – that’s an extra 4 MHz over a Uno. And the use of a through hole precision crystal (not a SMD resonator) allows the use of after market timing choices, eg 22.1184 MHz for more accurate UART timings.

What does it look like? 

At the moment the board mock-up looks like this:

If funding is successful (and we hope it will be) the Goldilocks will be manufactured by the team at Freetronics. Apart from being a world-leader in Arduino-compatible hardware and systems, they’re the people behind the hardware for Ardusat and more – so we know the Goldilocks will be in good hands.

Will it really be compatible?

Yes – the Goldilocks will be shipped pre-programmed with an Arduino compatible boot-loader, and the necessary Board description files will be available to provide a 100% compatible Arduino IDE experience.

Conclusion

If you think this kind of board would be useful in your projects, you want to support a good project – or both, head over to Pozible and make your pledge. And for the record – I’ve put my money where my mouth is :)

Please note that I’m not involved in nor responsible for the Goldilocks project, however I’m happy to promote it as a worthwhile endeavour. In the meanwhile have fun and keep checking into tronixstuff.com. Why not follow things on twitterGoogle+, subscribe  for email updates or RSS using the links on the right-hand column? And join our friendly Google Group – dedicated to the projects and related items on this website. Sign up – it’s free, helpful to each other –  and we can all learn something.

The post Introducing Goldilocks – the Arduino Uno-compatible with 1284p and uSD card appeared first on tronixstuff.



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