Planet Arduino

 

Hanging out at one side of the Atmel booth at Maker Faire was [Pamungkas Sumasta] who was showing off his Arduino cellphone called Phoenard. We really like the form-factor but its hackability is where it really shines. [Sumasta] showed off the menu system which is quite snappy and makes it simple for you to add your own applications. Software isn’t the only thing you can customize, as there’s a connector at the bottom of the phone. He showed off a breadboard attachment which was hosting LEDs of various colors. Their intensity can be altered using a simple slider app on the touchscreen. But there’s more power if want it. Also on exhibit was a self-balancing robot body which has a connector at the top for the phone.

[Sumasta] won the Atmel Hero contest and we assume that’s how he made it all the way to San Francisco from The Netherlands for Maker Faire. You can learn a few more technical details about Phoenard on the Facebook page.

Filed under: Arduino Hacks, Cellphone Hacks, Featured

A new development board has been released from the Arduino – Arduino Zero:

A new development board has been released from the Arduino stable of development products. This board has been developed jointly by Atmel and Arduino and targets ‘The next generation of IoT development’.

The Zero board contains an Atmel SAMD21 microcontroller, built around the 32-bit ARM Cortex M0+ processor. The board also packs 256 KB of flash and 32 KB of SRAM. Shield connectors are Arduino R3 compatible at 3.3 V. The (EDBG) Atmel embedded software debugger is available to aid program development.

Acording to Massimo Banzi, co-founder and CEO at Arduino “The Zero board expands the Arduino family by providing increased performance to fuel creativity of the Maker community. The flexible feature set enables endless project opportunities for devices and acts as a great educational tool for learning about 32-bit application development”.

Arduino Zero Targets the IoT - [Link]

Hinted at yesterday by Massimo Banzi during his keynote speech at MakerCon yesterday, Arduino has just officially announced their latest board—the Arduino Zero.

Read more on MAKE

It’s a pleasure to announce the latest development board, Arduino Zero, expanding the Arduino family by providing increased creative opportunities to the maker community.

Arduino and Atmel unveil the Arduino Zero, a simple and powerful 32-bit extension of the platform established by Arduino UNO. It aims to provide creative individuals with the potential to realize truly innovative ideas especially for smart IoT devices, wearable technology, high-tech automation, crazy robotics, and projects not yet imagined.

The board is powered by Atmel’s SAMD21 MCU, which features a 32-bit ARM Cortex® M0+ core and one of its most important feature is Atmel’s Embedded Debugger (EDBG), which provides a full debug interface without the need for additional hardware, significantly increasing the ease-of-use for software debugging. EDBG also supports a virtual COM port that can be used for device programming and traditional Arduino boot loader functionality.

Massimo Banzi, Arduino co-founder and CEO said:

“The flexible feature set enables endless project opportunities for devices and acts as a great educational tool for learning about 32-bit application development.”

Reza Kazerounian, senior vice president and general manager, microcontroller business unit at Atmel added:

“Leveraging more than 15 years of experience since the inception of AVR, simplicity and ease-of-use have been at the core of Atmel’s technology, Atmel is pleased to see the continued growth of the global maker community stemming from the increasing access and availability to open source platforms such as Arduino. We enable makers, but the power lies within the makers themselves.”

The first prototypes of Arduino Zero will be on display at Maker Faire Bay Area 2014 in San Mateo on May 17 and 18 at the following booths:
Arduino Booth: #204
Atmel Booth: #205
ARM Booth: #405

See you there!

 

This watch, by Jonathan Cook, recently won MAKE’s Arduino Challenge, as posted on Bits and Pieces from the Embedded Design World. [via]

The watch is the latest iteration of an ongoing BLE watch endeavor Cook has been exploring for the past nine months. In addition to time and date functionality, he’s building interfacing that any smartwatch wearer would want — email, Facebook notification, Twitter updates, etc., and hopes to have the community further the platform as well.

Atmel-based smartwatch wins Make challenge - [Link]

02JanDal @ instructables.com writes:

So, what exactly is this about?
Imagine: You are working on a project. You want to program in the Arduino language because of the simplicy. But you don’t want to use a 28 pin monster. Or you need peripherals like CAN or similar what the normal Arduino supported MCUs don’t have. So, what to do? Where are two alternatives:
1. Just don’t use the Arduino language and use things like bits and ports what you can’t understand.
2. Or continue reading this!

So, this instructable is going to show how to use the core files available from avr-developers.com. I’m also going to show you how to program the different MCUs and how to connect them to do so. At the end I’m going to give some ideas on what you can to with your new knowledge earned from this.

Arduino on all sorts of Atmels - [Link]

Evilthingamabober @ instructables.com writes:

Microcontrollers are, without a doubt, amazing little things. They are versatile, powerful, and extremely tiny. Unfortunately, the latter trait is also shared by both my wallet and my programming skills. My understanding of C is poor, and I can hardly afford to buy something like an Arduino or a decent ISP. And in any case, the Arduino would be overkill for many of my projects, which only need simple IC’s.

But as many of you know, DIY always finds a way. This tutorial is meant for those among us with no budgets or programming experience who want to start using these little machines. It is not based around the ATmega328 (the Arduino Uno chip), but rather the Attiny line of chips (the Atiny85 and Attiny2313, to be specific). The total cost of this project can go as lower than $15 if you know where to buy from, and you can still use the original Arduino IDE and language to program your projects in the end. Keep in mind that you will need some soldering skills to get this project done.

The Idiot’s Guide to Programming AVR’s on the Cheap - [Link]

In this article you will learn how to programm an ATtiny mcu using Arduino IDE.

Follows are directions for programming the ATtiny microcontrollers using the Arduino IDE. In plain English, this is how to program 8-pin Atmel chips as you would normally an Arduino. This is cool because the ATtiny is tiny, and – well – this allows you to make tiny things that don’t need a big ol’ microcontroller.

Program an ATtiny with Arduino - [Link]

As MAKE scouts through CES 2014 with the question "Is making going mainstream?", we have been finding more and more examples of how much it is, and the Atmel booth is one of the most defining models of that.

Read more on MAKE

BO.Duino is an Arduino compatible board based on ATmega328 ATMEL’s mcu. This board features many peripherals usually externally connected on a breadboard or prototyping board such as sensors, SD card etc. Peripherals included are:

- A real-time clock
- AT24 series external memory chip
- MicroSD card adaptor (SPI)
- RGB LED
- A potentiometer on analog input
- Connector for DS18b20 or DHt11 series sensors

BO.Duino – ATmega328 Arduino Compatible board - [Link]