Arduino Due « LeafLabs Garden

LeafLabs Garden » Community » The Lounge

Arduino Due

(23 posts) (12 voices)

Started 4 years ago by Darth Maker
Latest reply from gbulmer

12 Next »

Darth Maker
Member

http://arduino.cc/blog/2011/09/17/breakfast-at-arduino/

So, uh, I hope this doesn't ruin LeafLabs. :(

They have a picture of the Due on the post. Honestly, I like the Maple much better, mostly due to its size. I really don't like the Mega form-factor, it waste far to much space.

On the plus side, it's open source, so you can always steal code from them.

I wonder how they'll be priced. I bet the Maple Mini will still have a serious edge in small projects for a while.

Or is this all some conspiracy and you guys are already in on it, designing the Due yourselves!? (I doubt it, but I don't doubt the possibility that much.)

Posted 4 years ago #
JonnyBoats
Member

Well as they say: "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery."

Actually I think this is an example of open source hardware at it's best. Good designs (like "Arduino compatible") get copied while oddball, quirky and dysfunctional ideas get left by the wayside.

There is plenty of room in the market for lots of vendors, no worry that Arduno will kill anyone.

If anything this should help Maple as it will get more people writing "Maple compatible" programs :-)

Posted 4 years ago #
kaipyroami
Member

I don't like this arduino habit... More of that stupid header spacing.
Just got my Native today and it is beautiful!

Posted 4 years ago #
corguy
Member

I see it as a plus for the Maple because a lot more people will be working on STM32 stuff now. Before it was a bit of a risk behind moving to Maple because the relatively small Maple community and it seems to me this just expanded the community greatly.

Posted 4 years ago #
kaipyroami
Member

@corguy

well put! :)

Posted 4 years ago #
wyzarddoc
Member

Just wonder how compatible the library's will be? Also maybe will have an eclipse or code-blocks tool chain that anyone can configure.

Posted 4 years ago #
gbulmer
Moderator

corguy

I see it as a plus for the Maple because a lot more people will be working on STM32 stuff now

How did you come to his view?
The Arduino DUE is NOT an STM32F it is an Atmel SAM3U.
They have the same ARM Cortex-M3 CPU (and hence can use the same gcc compiler), but all of the hardware peripherals, which is the vast majority of the library's code, are different.

Before it was a bit of a risk behind moving to Maple because the relatively small Maple community and it seems to me this just expanded the community greatly.

How did you come to this view?
They are different microcontrolers (Atmel SAM3U vs ST Micro STM32F103) with significantly different hardware peripherals.
So a person working on an Arduino Due will NOT be working with the Maple's STM32F103 microcontroller. A user of an Arduino SAM3U is NOT expanding the Maple community.

I assume we will see how similar the libraries are pretty soon.
I would hope that the Arduino team are willing to collaborate and use things that already exist. IMHO it would be better for the Open Source community to have common APIs. AFAIK some of the Arduino team do make their living from selling their microcontrollers though, and they do command a powerful brand.

Maybe we will see Oak soon?

Posted 4 years ago #
corguy
Member

@gbulmer

Is your view that this hurts Maple?

If so I think that's too pessimistic, everything about the Maple is leveraged from the Arduino and moving to ARM (even if it's not STM32) is a plus for the Maple in my view. Especially having access to the SAM3U library code. And it will be up to the Maple team to work toward compatibility just due to the size difference of the communities.

Posted 4 years ago #
robodude666
Member

Only way I see this can "hurt" Maple or LeafLabs is because Arduino already has a name for themselves, and it will be easier for them to promote their new 32-bit board. So while LeafLabs will be affected by this, in some way, as long as they continue to make the great products that they are currently making, I shouldn't see them being hurt by it.

I believe the LeafLabs folk looked at the SAM3U as an option previously, but decided against it for whatever reason. Regardless, they found the STM32 and built a wonderful line of boards around it with very well documented software. While arduino compatibility is great to see in a product, I am looking forward to more products like the Maple Native and Maple Mini that break away from the Arduino's form factor, provide some arduino compatibility in software, but still provide full native (pun intended) support for the hardware.

Posted 4 years ago #
poslathian
LeafLabs

Thanks for the great discussion on this issue. We have been having a very similar back and forth with each other here at LeafLabs. We had the pleasure of being at the (second) announcement of the Due, and generally we had a great time at Open Hardware Summit (OHS) and Maker Faire.

I am glad that Arduino is finally waking up to 32 bit. Moving to 32 bit is a natural progression for the community, especially now that the chips are coming down in price. Obviously, everyone around here has "gotten it" for a while ;) When the available hardware is better, the output from the community will be better.

When we first started with Maple, there was a considerable amount of pushback from the Arduino community, it was said that 32bit was too complicated, too expensive, and generally unnecessary. To me, the announcement feels like a win.

In terms of the actual Due product, Arduino has a long way to go. As far as I can tell, Atmel provided the hardware platform, and the Arduino team has ported most of the "core" library over. I do not know how "100% compatible" the core will be, given 32bit versus 16bit issues like the max value of an int, or the default range of PWM. On Maple, we were always of the mind of breaking Arduino compatibility in favor of exposing the 32bit hardware. The Arduino developers might feel differently.

To my knowledge they have not really stabilized a bootloader scheme, or ported the many Arduino libraries to the new platform. They are looking to launch in January, and are asking for substantial developer support from the community. They were handing out beta hardware by invitation only at the conference.

Smoothing out the edges on the 32 bit platform was not easy for us, and I am sure Arduino will run in to many of the same problems. I look forward to seeing how they solve some of these issues, especially related the the USB and bootloading mechanisms. The Duo prototype they had only has one chip, like Maple. This turned out to be an enormous headache, since the USB programming interface lives on the same processor that is being reprogrammed (as you all know)!

Overall, the processor looks good, and is a hair faster than the *current* maple (...). I look forward to seeing the first reviews of the device in January.

Here at LeafLabs we have a very full product roadmap and have been working on some partnerships of our own that you will learn about in the coming months. Maple Native Betas are out the door, and with 1MB of external RAM! Oak has been admittedly behind schedule, but the finish line (aka release) is finally in sight! Further, STM32 is a very mature processor platform with a lot of life left in it. Our current hardware is based around STM32-F1 series processors, but we are looking forward to hardware with F2, and even F4 series chips! These are faster and better in every way ;)

Overall we would like to say to Arduino, welcome to the 32bit playground! If I had to ask one favor from you guys, it would be that you use the next few months before the Duo comes out to teach the Arduino community what can be done with 32bit hardware!

Posted 4 years ago #
gbulmer
Moderator

corguy -

Is your view that this hurts Maple?

I have an open mind.
You were the one saying

I see it as a plus for the Maple because a lot more people will be working on STM32 stuff now

and

Before it was a bit of a risk behind moving to Maple because the relatively small Maple community and it seems to me this just expanded the community greatly.

and I was the one asking you to explain why you said this.

I repeat, the Maple's STM32F103 and the Atmel SAM3U4 peripherals are very different, so there is likely little code sharing between the Maple's low-level libraries and the Arduino Due. People working on Arduino Due will not be growing the size of the Maple community, though they are growing the size of the Cortex-M3 community which might help encourage the compiler and software tools community.

poslathian - I agree with you that it will take significant effort to get the Arduino Due stabilised. But, IMHO the Arduino brand will attract support.

The STM32F103 is more mature than the SAM3U. I had a look at the Errata sheet for the SAM3U, and there are a few 'interesting' bugs in the hardware. I don't know what Atmel's policy is about publishing Errata, so that may be the entire list, in which case it is getting better, or there may be some issues which have not yet been properly characterised and are unpublished.

Other boards, for example the Teensy and Tennsy++, have the USB on the processor, and have both LUFA support (including contributions from the designer of Teensy) and unique USB bootloading. Teensy seems successful and quite popular. The current Arduino UNO uses an ATmega with on-board USB (to replace the FTDI chip), so I assume the Arduino team have some USB experience to build on.

I agree the F2 series chips look very good, but you have put me off considering it with your comment in these forums about them being superseded by an F3. I should ping ST about the Cortex-M4.

I do agree with the Arduino community that 32-bit ARM is a lot more complex than an 8-bit ATmega.

BUT, IMHO, that might be the wrong criteria.

There are a lot of really interesting things that can easily be done with a 32-bit STM32F103 which are very much more awkward, or even impractical, on an ATmega. So though the underlying MCU is more complex, the code the user writes can be simpler and easier to get working, or even possible.

I strongly agree that the Arduino team releasing an ARM board will encourage people to come across to 32-bit more quickly.

For me, the major technical strength of the Atmel SAM3U is the High-Speed USB.

Weaknesses compared to Maple RET6 include: no DAC, fewer SPI, fewer quadrature decoders, no CAN.
Also, the STM32F103 has three 12-bit ADCs, but the SAM3U has one 12-bit and one 10-bit ADC. The STM32F103 has the rather nifty 'dual sample mode' which might help me in a future project (ideally it would be triple sample, but I can't have everything :-)

Posted 4 years ago #
Slammer
Member

I am very happy because the arduino is moving to a different CPU.
Think about it.
What is arduino? It is not the hardware (actually the hardware is a simple naked atmega8 board).
Arduino is the libraries, the shields and most of all the Community.

There are many xDuino platforms around like maple, pinguino32, chipkit, etc... All these projects trying to make arduino style programming available in different platforms.
Until now the arduino platform was limited in a specific architecture, now the door is opening to another architecture. It is a step for multi-architecture development. It is not an easy task.
I hope to see all communities that working in different xduino architectures to work more closely for a common target:
- common IDE
- common libraries ( as common can be in different hardware)
- common shields
- many targets with different architectures. The user will select architecture according the requirements of a project.

For all these, I welcome the new xDuino member and I believe that this will help maple.

Posted 4 years ago #
Darth Maker
Member

Well, I got to hold and examine a Due prototype at the MakerFaire on Sunday. One thing I noticed very quickly is that they used a two layer board, and have the ADC lines crossing over digital lines on the other side. You can almost see the noise this would create doing 12-bit at 300Khz.

I really don't like the size of the Due/Mega. I feel that anything that big should have motor drivers built in, and three pin headers for many, most or all I/Os. But, I'm a roboticist, not a prototyper.

One thing is for sure though, the ST32 chips have far more PWM outputs, and this makes them very valuable for robotics.

I asked the Arduino guys whether they would be following more of a Leaflabs approach of really bringing out the power of the hardware, or going the route of maximum compatibility, similar to ChipKIT. They said they were planning on having all core functions compatible, but then going to get the community involved with where it goes beyond that.

The ChipKIT guys did not seem happy with the release. I think they feel they're product is threatened.

Posted 4 years ago #
gbulmer
Moderator

Darth Maker - I am with you on the size of the Arduino boards.
We use Freeduino Nano's for small robots. A friend has started using Maple Mini for a compact and unusual robot.

The STM32F timers seem to support more quadrature decoders than the SAM3U. Quadrature decoders are very useful for DC motor driven mobile robots.

The ChipKIT guys did not seem happy with the release. I think they feel they're product is threatened.

Did they say if their software is all Open Source yet? Earlier in the year, they had included pieces which were closed.

Posted 4 years ago #
crenn
Moderator

gbulmer, currently the USB and Ethernet stacks are closed sourced, and there is still quite a bit that is closed sourced (primarily compiler stuff I believe, I don't own the ChipKIT so I can't say). They're currently running a competition with a prize of $1000+ (dangerousprototypes.com is adding $100 to the prize I believe) for each of the USB and Ethernet stacks.

I have a Maple r3 in my backpack with a limited amount of electronics, but I'm switching to a Maple Mini r2 in a smaller container. While I understand there are uses for a lot of IO, most of the time I'm only using up to about 10 pins at a time while prototyping things (this excludes projects such as my university project which is using almost every IO available on the Maple Mini). The other problem I see with the Mega is that there is a lot of wasted space on that board, but it makes the layout easier and is still fine for prototyping.

@Darth Maker, Having motor drivers is very specific. In my case, I don't need motor drivers as the controllers for the motors of my project are external and very specific to my needs. It could also be that someone needs more powerful motor drivers than what is on that PCB. However, I have seen some Arduino clones which are exactly what you're wanting.

Posted 4 years ago #

RSS feed for this topic

12 Next »

Reply »

You must log in to post.