Planet Arduino

Every week the Hackaday tip line receives an email about a new dev board. The current trend is towards ARM devices, and only once have we seen an x86-based device. Today that count went up to two. It’s called the 86Duino and stuffs an old Pentium II-class machine capable of running DOS, Windows, and Linux into the space of an Arduino,

The 86Duino Zero features, of course, an x86 Vortex86EX processor running at 300 MHz. This board also features 128 MB of RAM, 8MB of Flash and the usual compliment of Arduino pins in a Leonardo-compatible layout. Also on the SoC is a PCIE bus, Ethernet, a USB 2.0 host, and an SD card. There’s a lot of stuff on this board for such a small size.

Compared to the gigahertz-fast ARM boards around, the 86Duino isn’t really that fast, but that’s not the point. There’s obviously a market for extremely tiny x86 boards out there as evidenced by the Intel Galileo, and this board is $30 cheaper than the Intel offering.

There’s no video out on this board, so someone will have to figure out how to attach a graphics card to the PCIE connector before we build a miniaturized old school DOS gaming rig. Still it’s a very neat piece of hardware. If you need to have it now, here’s a vendor.

Thanks [sohaib] for sending this one in.

DM&P has been producing low-power, x86-based Vortex processors for the embedded market for over ten years. Now in a nod to the Arduino market they have released the 86Duino Zero, a low-cost Arduino Leonardo sized board powered by their latest 300 MHz SoC Vortex86EX Processor.

This is a fully static 32-bit x86 processor board compatible with Windows OS, Linux and most other popular 32-bit RTOS. It integrates a PCIE bus, DDR3, ROM controller, xISA, I2C, SPI, IPC (Internal Peripheral Controllers with DMA and interrupt timer/counter included). The 86Duino Zero’s ports include USB 2.0 host and device coastline ports, a 10/100 Ethernet port and a microSD slot on the bottom of the board. The Zero’s baseboard also provides a 7-12V power jack, a reset button and a PCIe expansion connector.

The Zero supplies 14 digital I/O pins, half of which can provide 32-bit resolution PWM outputs and six 11-bit analog input pins. Each standard I/O pin supplies 16 mA while the 3.3 V pins can supply up to 400 mA. Like the Intel Galileo development board announced several weeks ago the 86Duino Zero marries Intel architecture to the Arduino platform. Its $39 price tag makes it an attractive proposition. [via]

The 86Duino Zero Runs Linux on x86 - [Link]

Dev boards based on microcontrollers and ARM System on Chips are everywhere, but finding a small pocketable computer based on an Intel processor has been difficult to find. [Massimo] of Arduino just unveiled a new Intel architecture Arduino-compatible board at the Rome Maker Faire. It’s called the Galileo, and it has everything you’d expect from a juiced-up Arduino running x86.

The main chip is an Intel Quark SoC running at 400MHz with 256 MB of DRAM. On board is a Mini-PCIe slot, 100Mb Ethernet port, Micro SD slot, RS-232, and USB host and client ports. Here’s the datasheet for the Galileo with all the applicable information.

The Galileo can be programmed with the standard Arduino IDE, but from the getting started guide, it looks like this board is running Yocto, a stripped down Linux for embedded environments.

Realistically, what we have here is a board with about the same processing power as a Raspberry Pi, but with Arduino compatibility, and a Mini PCIe port for some really fun stuff. It will be interesting to see what can be made with this board, but if you have any ideas on what to do with a Galileo before it’s released in two months, drop a note in the comments.