We’re happy to announce the release of the new Arduino Micro board.

The Arduino Micro packs all of the power of the Arduino Leonardo in a 48mm x 18mm module (1.9? x 0.7?).

It makes it easier for makers to embed the Arduino technology inside their projects by providing a small and convenient module that can be either used on a breadboard or soldered to a custom designed PCB.

The Micro has been developed in collaboration with Adafruit Industries, one of the leaders of the Maker movement. Adafruit is already developing a series of accessories for the new board that will complement its power and simplicity.

Throughout the month of November the product is available exclusively from Adafruit online and Radio Shack in retail stores.

Main features of Arduino Micro:

• The Arduino Micro is a microcontroller board based on the ATmega32u4.
• Like its brother the Leonardo board, the Arduino Micro has one microcontroller with built-in USB. Using the ATmega32U4 as its sole microcontroller allows it to be cheaper and simpler. Also, because the 32U4 is handling the USB directly, code libraries are available which allow the board to emulate a computer keyboard, mouse, and more using the USB-HID protocol.
• It has 20 digital input/output pins (of which 7 can be used as PWM outputs and 12 as analog inputs), a 16 MHz crystal oscillator, a micro USB connection, an ICSP header, and a reset button. It contains everything needed to support the microcontroller; simply connect it to a computer with a micro USB cable to get started.
• This allows the Micro to appear to a connected computer as a mouse and keyboard, in addition to a virtual (CDC) serial / COM port.

Technical specifications:

• Microcontroller: ATmega32u4
• Operating Voltage: 5V
• Input Voltage (recommended): 7-12V
• Input Voltage (limits): 6-20V
• Digital I/O Pins: 20
• PWM Channels: 7
• Analog Input Channels: 12
• DC Current per I/O Pin: 40 mA
• DC Current for 3.3V Pin: 50 mA
• Flash Memory: 32 KB (ATmega32u4) of which 4 KB used by bootloader
• SRAM: 2.5 KB (ATmega32u4)
• EEPROM: 1 KB (ATmega32u4)
• Clock Speed: 16 MHz

Photo credit: [Stimmer] on the Arduino Forum

[Stimmer] on the Arduino Forum hardcoded a way to display 160×240 (320×240 after some posts) VGA signal.

After working out how to do a timer interrupt I’ve had a go at making a VGA framebuffer. It is rather low-res at present(160×240) and fuzzy but I hope to be able to improve that. It has 8-bit colour (RRRGGGBB).
I cannot get Eagle to run right now so will have to describe the schematic in text:
Due pin 2 -> VGA pin 13 (HSync)
Due pin 3 -> VGA pin 14 (VSync)

Due pin 25 -> 820R resistor -> VGA pin 3 (blue)
Due pin 26 -> 390R resistor -> VGA pin 3 (blue)

Due pin 27 -> 2k2 resistor -> VGA pin 2 (green)
Due pin 28 -> 1k resistor -> VGA pin 2 (green)
Due pin 14 -> 470R resistor -> VGA pin 2 (green)

Due pin 15 -> 2k2 resistor -> VGA pin 1 (red)
Due pin 29 -> 1k resistor -> VGA pin 1 (red)
Due pin 11 -> 470R resistor -> VGA pin 1(red)

Due pin GND -> VGA pins 5,6,7,8,10

Via [Arduino Forum]

Today we release the latest addition to the Arduino family: the Arduino Due

This board is based on a powerful 32bit CortexM3 ARM microcontroller made programmable through the familiar Arduino API and its development environment. It’s an important step forward for Arduino as it increases the computing power available to Arduino users keeping the language as compatible as possible so that many programs will be migrated in a matter of minutes.

You can read all about the geeky details on the Arduino Due product page.

There are some things to be considered while approaching this new platform:

• It’s quite new so expect bugs and issues, but the code is in our github repository and we welcome any suggestion or patch.
• The AVR and ARM processors are quite different and a lot of the code that made low level access to the AVR registers won’t run on the new code without some adaptations.
• The processor, like all other in this class, runs at 3.3v therefore all the shields that fully implement the Arduino R3 layout are compatible straight away (like our wifi shield and our eth shield) but other 3rd party shield might not be compatible. if you have doubts ask your supplier and they will be able to tell you.
• It has a new IDE v1.5 that can compile both for AVR and ARM. After a period of testing and debuggin this will replace the 1.0.1 we supply at the moment. On this blog there is a post describing in more detail what’s new.
• It has some cool features like DACs, Audio, DMA , an experimental multi tasking library and more. check it out and let us know what you think.

I hope you’re all excited about this new product like we are and will join us in learning how to make the best of this new powerful product we have made available.

Have you ever wanted a smart home that can automatically adjusts the blinds for you? If so, this project is for you.

In this instructable, the author describes his approach to “smart blinds”, by using an Arduino board, an ethernet shield, a motor shield and a couple of sensors.

By means of a simple web-based GUI, the user can manually open and close the blinds, or he/she can setup both temperature and brightness thresholds in order to automate the whole process. Finally, opening and closing events can also be scheduled at pre-defined times of the day, if necessary.

The complete tutorial, together with the source code of the project, can be found here.

[Via: Instructables and Lifehacker]

We are eager to announce the launch of the official Arduino Starter Kit! We have been working hard together in developing a complete selection of 15 projects that will let you become a true arduino tinkerer!

But that’s more:

The new starter kit has been developed together with a series of ten video tutorials hosted by Arduino co-founder Massimo Banzi, which can be viewed at www.rs-components.com/arduino. Ideally used in conjunction with the videos, the kit provides an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. It contains all of the essential components required to start programming with the Arduino Uno board, and a guidebook featuring 15 different projects, which are designed to evolve the user from beginner to professional level. Comprising a motor, servomotor and driver, the kit also offers particular benefits to users wishing to apply mechatronics to their designs.

read through for the whole components and projects list

We are aware this kit will let a lot of people step in the Arduino world: for this reason we opened a brand new category of the arduino forum. You can buy the Kit on RS Components and will soon be available on the Arduino Store and the other distributors [notify me when this happen]

[Via: homepage of the workshop and Zoe Romano's blog]

Skube is a music player that allows you to discover and share music.

There are two modes, Playlist and Discovery. Playlist plays the tracks on your Skube, while Discovery looks for tracks similar to the ones on your Skube so you can discover new music that still fits your taste. When Skubes are connected together, they act as one player that shuffles between all the playlists. You can control the system as a whole using any Skube.

The interface is designed to be intuitive and tangible. Flipping the Skube changes the modes, tapping will play or skip songs and flipping a Skube on its front face will turn it off.

The Skube is a fully functional device, not just a concept. It use a combination of Arduino, Max/MSP and an XBee wireless network.

This project was made by Andrew Nip, Ruben van der Vleuten, Malthe Borch, and Andrew Spitz. It was part of the Tangible User Interface module at CIID ran by Vinay Venkatraman, David Cuartielles, Richard Shed, and Tomek Ness.

You can read the details and see the inner workings of the Skube here.

Via:[Create Digital Music]

Desde BricoGeek nos llega la noticia de la celebración de una nueva Barcamp, esta vez en Vigo. La reunión perfecta para cacharrear y debatir entre amigos sobre temas como el Open Hardware, Arduino o impresoras 3D entre otros muchos, y puede que con alguna que otra sorpresa.

Unas jornadas DIY muy interesantes que tendrán lugar en las instalaciones del CFP Daniel Castelao de Vigo en las que Alejandro Taracido presentará a su mítico robot ORUGAS con las últimas novedades añadidas.

Sin duda, un evento al que no se debe faltar!

Planning preliminar (sujeto a cambios):

• Introducción al Open Harwdare
• Orugas: Robot explorador basado en Arduino
• Impresión 3D DIY. Crea objetos en tu casa
• Workshop BricoGeek
• Taller: DIY Soldadura SMD por refusión
• Taller: Medidas PWM analógicas
• Presentación proyecto RACE
• Raspberry PI como servidor FTP de contenidos

Enlaces:

• Página oficial del Barcamp
• Inscripciones
• Cómo llegar

VIA | BricoGeek

The Arduino Wifi Shield is finally here!

We’ve been working for a while on this new wifi shield for Arduino that is quite different from what you can find already on the market.

Instead of just getting the usual pre-made module we decided to build a product that would encourage hacking and modifications so we decided to use an AVR32 processor running an open source version of TCP/IP and the WIFI software stack. The Arduino communicates over SPI with the AVR32 and this in turn controls the WIFI module, an HDG104 from H&D Wireless. Following the Arduino tradition the full software stack running on the AVR32 is released as open source as well as the Arduino library that controls the shield.

Having the full source for the software stack allows adding more complex protocols directly on the AVR32 without using the limited code space of the atmega328 on the Arduino. On top of this, skilled C developers can re-program the shield to operate as a standalone device without the need of an Arduino connected to it.  Since we expect that there will be amazing new features created by the community we made updating its firmware very easy, just connect a usb cable to the shield. We believe this opens up to a lot of hacking potential.

Here are some of its features:

• Connection via: 802.11b/g networks
• Encryption types: WEP and WPA2 Persoanl
• Connection with Arduino on SPI port
• on-board micro SD slot
• ICSP headers
• FTDI connection for serial debugging of WiFi shield
• Mini-USB for updating WiFi shield firmware
• HDG104 Wireless LAN 802.11b/g System in-Package
• Atmega 32UC3 32bit microcontroller
• open source firmware.

For more details see the product page and on the wifi-shield on the Arduino Store.

We hope you will enjoy creating with the new member of the Arduino family.

Open Electronics‘ staff were looking for a common and standard hardware platform usable on different robots they were working on. Their goal was to find a single platform that had to provide power supply to the microcontroller, it had to provide stabilized voltage for the servos, and, finally, it had to be equipped with an obstacle detector and with an IR receiver.

Having chosen Arduino as the target core board, they developed an ad-hoc shield meeting all these requirements, whose detailed description can be found here, together with the BOM and a lot of source code.

[Via: Open Electronics]