Arduino Project Upgrades With 2 New Boards

Posted by timothy on Sunday September 26, 2010 @06:47AM from the now-with-less-italian dept.

EqualSlash writes "The Arduino Project is releasing two new boards — Arduino Uno to replace Duemilanove and Arduino Mega 2560 to replace the existing Arduino Mega board. With Uno, the board is not just getting a new pronunciation-friendly name but also has a custom-made USB-serial converter to replace the older FTDI chipset, thereby removing the need to install drivers (they now have their own USB Vendor ID). It now has a logo and stylish packaging, and soon will have its own branded web store. A new Ethernet integrated board and a tinkering toolkit will be made available shortly."

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Re:And we care because? by Anonymous Coward · 2010-09-26 07:27 · Score: 5, Informative

The Arduino system is a development kit around Atmel Mega8 microcontrollers. It makes microcontroller development simpler for those without a background in programming or hardware design by providing easy programmability with a boot loader and an integrated USB to serial converter, ready-made "shields" (pluggable boards with specific functions) and a software environment which abstracts from some of the nastier aspects of microcontroller programming. It has got quite a fanbase in the "maker community".