Arduino Hardware Roadmap

Hello,

Are there any plans to make high performance DSP and FPGA-based Arduinos?

Cheers,
Joe Gorse

It's been my experience (with being on this forum for 3 years or so) that Arduino does not preannouce new products or have a published roadmap of future plans. I think one week notice of a new board coming out is considered 'advance' notice. :wink:

For being a open sourced project, they are pretty closed mouth about new hardware plans. :wink:

They do have a active developers site where future software features are always being talked and developed:
http://arduino.cc/pipermail/developers_arduino.cc/

Lefty

a DSP would be awesome... does ATMEL make them?

retrolefty:
It's been my experience (with being on this forum for 3 years or so) that Arduino does not preannouce new products or have a published roadmap of future plans. I think one week notice of a new board coming out is considered 'advance' notice. :wink:

For being a open sourced project, they are pretty closed mouth about new hardware plans. :wink:

They do have a active developers site where future software features are always being talked and developed:
http://arduino.cc/pipermail/developers_arduino.cc/

Lefty

I checked out the mailing list. I sent an email asking about a hardware roadmap and have had no response yet.

Perhaps some marketing is in order first. Would the users of the Arduino platform benefit and be interested in access to high performance electronics for development? Can the software infrastructure support more advanced devices outside of the Atmel line of MCUs?

If so, the shield interfaces would benefit from standardization (think IPC) for higher speed/sensitivity/performance for those types of applications. A document, or open standard, which describes those common hardware interfaces would help promote open hardware development, inter-compatibility, and road mapping future development.

Cheers,
Joe

jhgorse:

retrolefty:
It's been my experience (with being on this forum for 3 years or so) that Arduino does not preannouce new products or have a published roadmap of future plans. I think one week notice of a new board coming out is considered 'advance' notice. :wink:

For being a open sourced project, they are pretty closed mouth about new hardware plans. :wink:

They do have a active developers site where future software features are always being talked and developed:
http://arduino.cc/pipermail/developers_arduino.cc/

Lefty

I checked out the mailing list. I sent an email asking about a hardware roadmap and have had no response yet.

Perhaps some marketing is in order first. Would the users of the Arduino platform benefit and be interested in access to high performance electronics for development? Can the software infrastructure support more advanced devices outside of the Atmel line of MCUs?

If so, the shield interfaces would benefit from standardization (think IPC) for higher speed/sensitivity/performance for those types of applications. A document, or open standard, which describes those common hardware interfaces would help promote open hardware development, inter-compatibility, and road mapping future development.

Cheers,
Joe

There have been devices made based on the Arduino code and such (not sure to what level) for 32-bit ARM controllers:

http://www.xduino.com/
http://www.liquidware.com/shop/show/IXM/Illuminato+X+Machina

:slight_smile:

I don't see much in the way of Arduino users wanting more processing power. For the tasks that MCUs are used for there just isn't that need. Of course, like cr0sh mentions, there are a number of ARM-based products that will provide that extra power.

If you need high performance then there's only a small price jump to using hardware like a Plug computer or such. Wait until the end of the year and you'll probably be able to buy a Raspberry Pi for ~$25.

Hi!

The problem with the absence of roadmap is a loss of users for Arduino.

I started with an Arduino Uno and wanted more power. Since all the Arduino boards were 8-bit based and the Arduino Due was kept secret, I switched for a chipKIT UNO32: 80 Mhz 32-bit MIPS, 128K Flash, 16K SRAM, Arduinoâ„¢ Uno form factor and 42 available I/Os.

I'm very happy with my new chipKIT UNO32 board, with enough power, memory and ports for quite a period. The IDE designed by Diligent can address both Arduino ATMega and chipKIT PIC32 platforms. Level of compatibility is good and improving.

Support from Microchip is excellent and very responsive.

So, Arduino and ARM, beware: competitors are coming! :wink:

avenue33:
So, Arduino and ARM, beware: competitors are coming! :wink:

In case you and OP haven't heard - there's a new Arduino coming down the pipe, based on ARM - called the Due.

Also, I wouldn't say that anything is a "competitor" for the Arduino, as long as it is still in the spirit of the Arduino and is open-source based...

:slight_smile:

Also, I wouldn't say that anything is a "competitor" for the Arduino, as long as it is still in the spirit of the Arduino and is open-source based...

I don't think the Arduino considers other manufactures as competitors, but the arduino will always be in competition for users, the true source of their success. Lose too much support from your existing or future user base and you will fail. So far Arduino has been very successful at building a large and growing user community and I don't see anything else attracting the same number of users over a similar time scale. There are products and groups that I have found interesting sense the arduino started up, but none seem to have gained the same traction that the arduino platform has:

Propeller chip, it's certainly a different kind of cat.
TI MSP .50 cent chip, $5 board.
Many ARM based modules approching or at or under $30.
Picaxe, lower start-up cost then arduino.

So there are potential 'competitors' on the horizon, but so far the Arduino team has managed to avoid pot holes large enough to slow their popularity. But make no mistake, the Arduino 'movement' could flame out in time as there is no guarantee that past performance will dictate future success.

Lefty

cr0sh:
In case you and OP haven't heard - there's a new Arduino coming down the pipe, based on ARM - called the Due.

I'm aware of the Arduino Due, but I don't consider one month notice as a roadmap :wink:

retrolefty:
Lose too much support from your existing or future user base and you will fail.

I fully agree with you: the user base support is the key part of the "Arduino spirit", so to speak.

What interesting with the chipKIT offer is the multi-platform IDE, based on Arduino 0022 with AVR compiling, but expanded to PIC32 compiling.