charlie_dream:
Finally, An ARM-powered Arduino | HackadayFar removed from the legions of 3D printers featured at this year’s Maker Faire in New York was a much smaller, but far more impressive announcement: The ARM-powered Arduino DUE is going to be released later this month.
Instead of the 8-bit AVR microcontrollers usually found in Arduinos, the DUE is powered by an ATSAM3X8E microcontroller, itself based on the ARM Cortex-M3 platform. There are a few very neat features in the DUE, namely a USB On The Go port to allow makers and tinkerers to connect keyboards, mice, smartphones (hey, someone should port IOIO firmware to this thing), and maybe even standard desktop inkjet or laser printers.
The board looks strikingly similar to the already common Arduino Mega. That’s no mistake; the DUE is compatible with existing shields, so connecting a RAMPS board for your 3D printer should be a snap.
Here’s a PDF (http://hackadaycom.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/due.pdf) the Arduino and Atmel guys were handing out at their booth. A few DUE boards have already made it into the hands of important people in the Arduino community, including 3D printer guru [Josef Prusa]. Sadly, the folks at Arduino didn’t think media personalities needed a DUE before its release, so you’ll have to wait until we get our hands on one later this month for a review.
@hackaday.com
That kind of statement by who every originated it will most likely lead to damaged Due boards very quickly I suspect. The Due will be mechanicaly compatible to the standard shield layout, but the Due beings a 3.3 volt board is not compatible with older 5 volt only shields and this is bound to cause problems with begineers buying wrong shields or trying to use their existing shield boards. The Arduino team has added a new shield pin sense Rev 3 boards that can be used by newer shield designs to possibly support both 5 and 3.3 volt controller boards, but there will always be a potential trap there in my opinion. But maybe I'm being to negative, maybe the Due's shield input pins will all be '5 volt tolerent', or perhaps the damage is just in theory rather then in reality? I don't know for sure, but it will be interesting to see how this all works out.
Lefty