i know a lot of us dont visit the homepage.... so here it is
first impression ... eh ok, nothing at first really jumps out and smacks me
I'd like to see the arduino IDE 1.0 more than the board 1.0
It seems that the board will be less costly, possibly making it more popular. I guess the atmega 328 will be available more than now.
Hurrah! They get rid of the FTDI chip and add a chip that can appear as a HID. That alone is worth upgrading.
Korman
well FTDI seemed safer with shortage of Atmegas...
I guess the atmega 328 will be available more than now.
Hmm, nope. The ATmega 328 is probably going to be short for a number of months yet.
I also would rather hear about the IDE than the new boards.
The no-driver situation is nice. That will be useful and will allow people to run the arduino IDE and upload to a board from a computer which has no drivers for it (a company computer for example).
Arduino ethernet board has taken much too long coming. It has been over 45 months since massimo posted some pictures of one (that looked perfect).
Mowcius
I have mixed feelings about the replacement of the FTDI USB controller. On the one hand: increased capabilities and reprogramability! Perhaps a lower price (It's annoying that the FTDI costs as much or more as the main CPU.) On the other hand, the FTDI drivers have been relatively problem free and well supported by FTDI, and the chip has become rather commonly available. The new chip seems unavailable to mortals (not stocked at digikey or mouser, order in units of several thousand) and is from a company that has a reputation of delivering new chips late (is this chip new?), and a poor track record of keeping existing chips available.
On the bright side, I don't see any indications that the new chip will be used to provide backward-incompatible capabilities, so it seems like duemilanove boards won't immediately be obsolete either...
Yeah I do think that we need a chip that other people can get their hands on or else we will find that most new clones have to be created with no USB on board.
Somehow I think that FTDI will not die until there is an easily purchased replacement for all the little people in the arduino world to use.
Mowcius
I think relying on Atmel, who have an atrocious record for being able to supply their own products, for the USB chip could well be a bad idea. I was personally hoping they would migrate over to some kind of ARM based chip.
I think opening their own webstore is also a kick in the teeth for all of the distributors who have paid for the Arduino Project from day one by selling the products.
I thought it would be a single chip solution by kicking out ATmega328 and FT232 all together and replace them with a single USB ATmega.
Yeah that was one of y other thoughts. There are Atmel chips with USB built in. Why on earth did they not use one of those instead of having a separate chip for the USB?
Pity they didn't put a second row of pins inside pins 8 -AREF at standard 01." spacing so it would be a doddle to make homebrew stripboard shields. Keep the 'brain fart' spacings for all the shields out there and add a new row (or at least holes) at the correct spacing.
I'm intrigued at what the extra 6 pin header is for.....
I'm intrigued at what the extra 6 pin header is for.....
Where do you see them?
I'm intrigued at what the extra 6 pin header is for.....
Probably ICSP for the USB chip.
-j
I have mixed feelings about the replacement of the FTDI USB controller.
Likewise. The FTDI just works, and driver support is good.
I know there's a standard USB serial interface, but I have never seen a commercial device that actually used it. Why?
-j
The atmega32U* and other with U in the name have built-in usb functionality, only need the software side, and that is pretty much covered by the LUFA lib, the problem is the shortage of atmel micros around the world, only if they had a better supply chain they could be an a lot better company.
I would keep using 28-pin DIP 328's just because a hobbyist can easily mess up one and still replace it with a good one or take it and put it in a standalone project. If it's a surface mount, it will be a different story.
Where do you see them?
I'll leave it to you to work out where I got that from 
Well, not pins exactly........
Is it just me or does the reset button look a bit tacky ?