The long-awaited Arduino Due just hit the market, replacing the 8-bit, 16MHz brain of the popular Uno microcontroller prototyping platform with a 32-bit, 84MHz processor, while augmenting inputs and capabilities all around.
For robotics and electronics hobbyists, its a moment of much excitement. But for the rest of us, what does this new controller offer over the older models?
"Having a 32bit ARM processor running at 84 MHz allows you to do much more much quicker," explains Arduino co-founder Massimo Banzi in an e-mail to Wired. "If you think about the Quadcopters that Chris Anderson and his community are building, they need to read many sensors as fast as possible then process all that data to calculate how to keep the quadcopter flying properly. Having a faster processor, with much more capabilities like DMA can increase the stability, responsiveness and precision of the aircraft while using less chip to do it."
The heart of the Arduino Due is the Atmel SAM3X8E, an ARM Cortex-M3-based processor. And the board builds off the capabilities of this summer's Arduino Leonardo release, offering two two micro USB ports — one for programming and communications and one that allows the Due to act as a client or host, allowing it to act as or utilize a USB mouse or keyboard. This addition gives Banzi excitement. "The USB host is something people have requested a lot over the years and it’s one of the places where we’re going to see the craziest applications being developed by the community."
Thanks to its new Atmel chip, the Arduino Due takes a giant leap forward in terms of ADC performance, allowing designers to push the limits of their creations. "Many people have built cool open source scientific instruments using Arduino in the past, with the Due they get 12-bit analog inputs, 12-bit analog outputs," Massimo explains. The theoretical sampling rate has been multiplied to a whopping 1,000 ksps (kilosamples per second). In comparison, the Arduino Uno, Leonardo, and Mega 2560 boards all have theoretical ADC speeds of 15 ksps.
The Due is also the first Arduino to feature a built-in digital-to-analog converter — two, in fact. An audio library for the Due is also being released, coupling onto the Due's ability for wav file playback. Meanwhile, rumors about about a Google-written ogg player code that can also be used.