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New Arduino Due Brings More Power To the Table

Posted by timothy on from the put-it-next-to-the-pi dept.

mikejuk writes "After six years in the making, the Arduino Due is finally becoming available and, with a price tag of $49, is bound to give a boost to the platform. The Due, which means 2 in Italian and is pronounced 'doo-eh', replaces the 8-bit, 16MHz Uno by a 32-bit, 84MHz processor board that also has a range of new features — more memory, a USB port that allows it to pretend to be a mouse or a keyboard say, 54 I/O pins and so on — but what lets you do more with it is its speed and power. The heart of the new Arduino Due is the Atmel SAM3X8E, an ARM Cortex-M3-based processor, which gives it a huge boost in ADC performance, opening up possibilities for designers. The theoretical sampling rate has gone from the 15 ksps (kilosamples per second) of the existing boards, the Arduino Uno, Leonardo, and Mega 2560, to a whopping 1,000 ksps. What this all means is that the Due can be used for much more sophisticated applications. It can even play back WAV files without any help. Look out for the Due in projects that once would have needed something more like a desktop machine."

7 of 130 comments (clear)

  1. Unfortunately for Arduino by taktoa · · Score: 1, Informative

    The TI Stellaris Launchpad ($5, free shipping, 80 MHz) and Raspberry Pi ($30, 700 MHz) beat the living hell out of the Due on price and processing power

    1. Re:Unfortunately for Arduino by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      Stellaris LaunchPad is out of its intro pricing now, and costs $13, but that's still a hell of a lot cheaper than $49!!

      Stellaris is Cortex-M4F, not Cortex-M3, so it's better suited for DSP and math operations (built-in floating point unit) too...

    2. Re:Unfortunately for Arduino by mako1138 · · Score: 4, Informative

      To be fair, the Stellaris Launchpad is obviously a loss leader. The earlier MSP430 Launchpad never really gained a foothold in the hobbyist community despite its low price, so it remains to be seen how TI will manage this time around. Perhaps they don't care.

    3. Re:Unfortunately for Arduino by Spirilis · · Score: 4, Informative

      They certainly tried, and I personally looked at the MSP430 launchpad as a fun distraction last spring ... and ended up ditching Arduino altogether, seeing as most of my projects didn't need the space. What TI was missing was Arduino's IDE, as hideous as it sounds, but they have it now--in the form of Energia (http://www.energia.nu). Still not as established as Arduino though.

      Another big hit was the chips they released initially--the 1st gen "value line" chips were hideously underpowered, like 2KB flash/128 bytes of SRAM, more ATTiny-like in size. The current "v1.5" LaunchPad you buy comes with 3rd-gen value line parts, up to 16KB flash, still not quite arduino but doing a lot better (and with hardware UART).

      I hope the Stellaris LaunchPad catches on quicker, it looks like OpenOCD is starting to work with it so I have high hopes a UNIX-based environment can be easily deployed for Stellaris development soon. What I am personally more impressed with is the LaunchPad's BoosterPack form factor ( http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/BYOB )--they have thought of a simple and straightforward way to expand the capabilities, while retaining (in theory) some backwards compatibility with boosterpacks made for the MSP430 for example. Much nicer than Arduino's "shield" layout IMO.

      --
      the real at&t mix
    4. Re:Unfortunately for Arduino by makomk · · Score: 3, Informative

      Normal USB doesn't require excessive interrupt-time processing. The USB controller on the Raspberry Pi, on the other hand, implements most of the USB controller functionality in software and was taking up something like 15% of the CPU time just in USB-related interrupt handling before they optimized the driver - even if you weren't actively using USB! Also, it turns out that the Pi has trouble meeting the real-time requirements of its USB controller too because the SD card driver causes excessive interrupt latency. This was one of the reasons why people had so many problems with USB devices on the Pi.

  2. Why Arduino again? by geoskd · · Score: 3, Informative

    All I can say is that Arduino was ok for its time, but there are plenty of other better alternatives out there. Take the Digilent line of uController boards For example. the MX3CK is basically the Arduino Due with a whole ton better IO. If you want really advanced, jump to the MX7CK and kick the crap out of that Arduino. For additional fun take a look at their Pmods. Point being, there are plenty of better alternatives to the Arduino out there already; alternatives that compete and defeat on features and cost.

    -=Geoskd

    --
    I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
  3. A bit expensive? by echusarcana · · Score: 3, Informative

    It is a great learning tool, but the Arduino always seemed a little overpriced: especially the Mega 2560 version. On the Uno you inevitably run out of I/O pins when you are building anything remotely useful. I've switched over to the Teensy for my projects. A much better value: http://www.pjrc.com/teensy/