Linux-capable Arduino TRE Debuts At Maker Faire Rome 47
DeviceGuru writes "At the Maker Faire Rome this week, Arduino announced a next-generation Arduino single board computer featuring a dual-processor architecture, and able to run a 'full Linux OS', in contrast to the lightweight OpenWRT Linux variant (Linino) buried inside the Yun's Atheros WiFi module. The Arduino TRE features a 1GHz 32-bit TI Sitara AM335x ARM Cortex-A8 SoC for running Linux software, plus an 8-bit Atmel ATmega MCU for AVR-compatible control of expansion modules (aka shields). The TRE's Sitara subsystem includes HDMI video, 100Mbps Ethernet, and 5 USB 2.0 ports, and is claimed to provide up to 100X the performance the Arduino Leonardo and Uno boards. Interestingly, the TRE's development reportedly benefited from close collaboration between Arduino and the BeagleBoard.org foundation."
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That would be a hell of an identity
Crysis
Unboxing Flickr Set (Score:2, Informative)
SF author / design maven Bruce Sterling picked up one at the Maker Faire and posted an Unboxing photo set:
https://secure.flickr.com/photos/brucesterling/sets/72157636182707015/with/10085336073/
Scroll to the bottom for the first picture in the set.
The display box is rigged with a sound chip that plays portentous music when the board is removed.
Re:Unboxing Flickr Set (Score:5, Informative)
D'oh! Tre-not-Galileo (Score:2)
You are correct sir! I didn't realize Arduino had released multiple new boards.
The Galileo is pretty cool, though.
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Looking at the specs, it's like the Arduino R3 and Beaglebone Black had some time alone in a room and this thing spawned.
Same Sitara 1Ghz processor, and BBB also has 2 Cortex M4 MCUs. However, this one sports a fullsize HDMI out instead of the microHDMI on the BBB, and loads more USB ports. Looking good...
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Bit off-topic (Score:1)
Back when I was wee lad, little electronic kits consist of discrete transistors, LEDs, op-amps, etc. You can make little toys with blinking lights and such, and perhaps gain some rudimentary but empirical experience with electronics.
I realize today's a different, whole lot more sophisticated (in terms of technology) era, but what would be the equivalent today? This Arduino kit seems way over the top for such purpose.
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GPIO ports, power and ground on a 0.1" connector are the key.
It doesn't matter what is driving it whether an 8051, 80C66, 68000, pentiblob, PDP11 or even ghetto chips with ARMs in them. The 0.1" connector lets you plug in your prototype board and wire up transistors and LEDs and stuff like that.
Re: Bit off-topic (Score:1)
It does matter what's driving it, though. If it's so abstracted away that you can't actually address the real port hardware it might as well be an io module plugged into a windows box and programmed with labview or visual basic. And no, if you work in "IT" you probably don't get what I mean.
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>if you work in "IT"
Ha ha. Good one.
Re:Bit off-topic (Score:5, Interesting)
Whether you use this, a regular Arduino or whatever, you still need transistors, op-amps, resistors and so on to build the stuf it interfaces with. I think the possibilities you gain with an easy to program microcontroller actually makes regular electronics more powerful and more fun to play with as a result.
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That Arudino kit *is* over the top. You're looking more for the original style Arduino Uno: http://arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoardUno [arduino.cc]
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Most of the available boards including RaspberiPi are not suitable for embedded design experiments (that's my personal opinion though). I prefer to program low level I/O code using C or even assembly for such purposes than writing a linux code (which in the case of RaspberyPi is several giga bytes).
I guess older versions of Arduino used to be what I want. I bought a few cheap Chinese boards (ARM and AVR) from ebay a few years ago and they are exactly what I want.
Btw. I built my first radio (the circuit boa
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If the more powerful boards in questions would get a easy Arduino IDE and a simple Arduino API, would that change your mind ?
I don't know the future, but I really hope that the Linux will adopt the Arduino library for basic I/O programming that fit a lot of simple applications.
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The Arduino, and similar microcontroller based products, are the equivalent of those little electronics kits. Some vendors even bundle the board with a guide and assorted electronics components to help people get rudimentary emperical experience with electronics.
These boards are much more than tiny computers. They will happily accept analog signals. You can also create analog outputs with a rudimentary circuit. This allows you to hang traditional passive and active components off of the I/O ports, which
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Back when I was wee lad, little electronic kits consist of discrete transistors, LEDs, op-amps, etc. You can make little toys with blinking lights and such, and perhaps gain some rudimentary but empirical experience with electronics.
I realize today's a different, whole lot more sophisticated (in terms of technology) era, but what would be the equivalent today? This Arduino kit seems way over the top for such purpose.
This Arduino is their their big, bad, powerful one. Your basic Arduino Uno, or a nice, breadboard-compatible Arduino nano (non-Arduino branded nanos are under $10) are probably more analogous to a 'little electronics kit'. This device is, of course, capable of that as well(in fact, it's capable of also being the computer you write the code on as well as the arduino you run it on. the BeagleBone isn't exactly god's gift to high-performance desktop experiences; but it works just fine as a full fledged linux d
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The most basic microcontrollers like the attiny4x or attiny8x, witch are easily supported on the Arduino IDE, allow to program design that perfectly fit your "full color on a string of individually addressable leds" and "Power, Ground and data. And even that went from needing two data wires to just one." goals.
I just shipped boards to a client that need to control a string of 20 lasers from just a single strobe signal of a camera with the capability to modulate the strobe signal to modulate additional datas
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Check AdaFruit.com and Radio Shack for starters. I've also been looking for the equivalent of the oldschool kids' kits to help me practice my soldering & learn the basics, and those are the two stores I've found some real potential at. I might work my way up to the computer-style PCBs in the distant future, but for now I'm closer to the "connect a handful of components and get excited if the LED actually turns on" stage. :-)
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Back when I was wee lad, little electronic kits consist of discrete transistors, LEDs, op-amps, etc. You can make little toys with blinking lights and such, and perhaps gain some rudimentary but empirical experience with electronics.
I realize today's a different, whole lot more sophisticated (in terms of technology) era, but what would be the equivalent today?
FPGAs [fpga4fun.com]. Instead of programming a chip someone else designed, you make your own circuits, just like in the good old days. Except you don't have to solder much, and you have all sorts of macro programming tricks (e.g. for repeating a circuit block 100 times, each with different parameters) you'd expect from software development.
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FPGA allow a lot of fun design, but there are still more expensive and complex to understand than a simple Arduino kit and IDE. Many FPGA need multiple power rails, external bitstream memory and external oscillator. Not really as fun as a small highly integrated small uC. But I hope that those two technologies will collides and bring the fun of FPGA flexibility to the uC world. There is more and more experiments on that matter from more and more manufacturers, but none are actually as open and as simple as
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Thanks (Score:1)
Hey, thanks to all for chiming in. I'll look into these kits, and maybe I'll dust off the breadboard, even wire it up to do something silly. I hope this helps to get interested young'uns going, as well as geezers like me.
To wmac1, I hear you, I'm in a somewhat similar boat, although I don't have no PhD. Software, abstract and non-tactile, doesn't give you the same satisfaction as even a primitive hairy-wired breadboard prototype. Maybe it's like the difference between math and physics, as Feynman on
But how fast does it boot? (Score:2)
How fast does the thing come up with a file system, USB support, and wifi? That needs to happen in less than 10 seconds for a faceless embedded application or people are going to wonder if it's working. And what about the file system? Can you pull power without corrupting it or requiring a long fsck operation?
Ok arduino (Score:2)
There's this, a Intel version, great, but there is already non existent support for due and not much more for leo, so keep making new boards, it doesnt do much good if they are not supporing it and people are not making libraries for it
Next board without the ATmega32u4 ? (Score:2)
The AM3359 I/O capabilities easily outperform the ATmega32u4, so why not use the CONFIG_PREEMPT_RT patch and porting the Arduino libraries directly on the AM3359 ? The response is probably the time to do this work, but I hope that the Adruino API will be in the future directly integrated into the Linux kernel, this would make the basic I/O programming far more standard and easy than it is today. Setup a basic PWM output or an analog input is still too hard on Linux compared to an Arduino.
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Setup a basic PWM output or an analog input is still too hard on Linux compared to an Arduino.
its trivial after someone writes a kernel module to do those things
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Have you ever programmer a AM3xxx I/O ? Just read the appropriate user manual to figure out how complex this can be. And last time I checked you have to statically do the multiplexer configuration in the C board file and have to change the definition header file too because only the internal signals defined for the evaluation board are defined, witch is only maybe something like 1/4 of the possibilities of the multiplexer. There is no way to even like a simple GPIO name to the corresponding multiplexed conf
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And you are luck to even have 3.3V in your design. I have worked on a AM3xxx design where we have to use 1.8V because most of the peripherals components where 1.8V. I did't have a noise problem, but the AM3XXX have so complex I/O programming model that some tasks are now handled by a external CPLD, to prevent lost of knowledge in case we change the processor in the futures, witch is about to be the case after 3 or 4 years. A standard and easy library like the Arduino provides would have been very welcome on
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What is the point of the small extra Atmel MCU?
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hw pwm shitniz? for servos, motor control and such.
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I have a beaglebone black and it does all that by itself. Tons of GPIO, PWM, 8 ADC inputs, plus it can bit bang all the usual serial bus stuff.
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There are a few reasons for adding a small "IO processor" to a system. Firstly more IO. The BBB looks like it has lots of IO on first glance but on closer inspection you realise that much of that many of the IO pins conflict with either the HDMI output or the EMMC. Secondly the small processor can do the ugly bit-banging stuff (for example driving a multiplexed LED display) without bothering the main CPU too much. Thirdly the characteristics of the IO pins on microcontrollers are often more friendly to hob
call me when it's actually available (Score:3)
...because almost a month after the Yun was announced as being "available", it still isn't available from any of the major US distributors (digikey, mouser, adafruit, sparkfun, and a handful of others I've tried.) I'm not sure what's going on - I think distributors might be trying to clear out stock on existing WiFi boards.
You can buy it online from Arduino direct...if you want to pay nearly the value of the device in shipping. Seriously, they want $50 to ship a $60 board from Spain to the US.
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Well, I see a great reseller opportunity for you. Order 100 of them and sell on Amazon or eBay.