Is Arduino Due coming?

kind of drifting way off topic...

Jantje:
...
A more legal comparison is with patents: If you request a patent in the USA you have to disclose all details. As soon as that is done, china can copy your work 100% legal and 100% informed just as if it is open source. But no country in the world with a mutual patent agreement with the USA is legally allowed to import those goods. So it is law which is protecting the patent owners and it is law which protects the arduino trademark.

patents vs open source are not even close to the same thing.
A patent is a disclosure of IP in an attempt to protect it.
Open Source is a disclosure of IP in an attempt to give it away.

These two are very different.

And I agree with Pico, in that given our capitalistic greed driven societies,
that if you give something away for free, you have
to be naive to think that there won't be somebody out there that will attempt to take
that free resource and attempt to monetize it.

With respect to trademarks,
if you closely looked at the "Arduino" trademark, it was only recently
assigned, and IMHO, I think they were lucky to have obtained the US "Arduino" mark - given their delay.
The Arduino guys were complaining about use of their "trademark"
a few years before they bothered to follow through with the proper legal paper work
to make it an official legal trademark.
i.e. if you want to play in the real world of business, you need to understand certain
rules of the game, especially if you want to have legal protection for things like IP
or trademarks.

--- bill

bperrybap
I agree it is off-topic but still interesting 8)

bperrybap:

Jantje:
...
A more legal comparison is with patents: If you request a patent in the USA you have to disclose all details. As soon as that is done, china can copy your work 100% legal and 100% informed just as if it is open source. But no country in the world with a mutual patent agreement with the USA is legally allowed to import those goods. So it is law which is protecting the patent owners and it is law which protects the arduino trademark.

patents vs open source are not even close to the same thing.
A patent is a disclosure of IP in an attempt to protect it.
Open Source is a disclosure of IP in an attempt to give it away.

These two are very different.

I never stated that patents and open source are not very different. But if you are in china and the patent is in USA it is 100% legal to copy and you have 100% information on how to do it. Even if you are a researcher or doing non commercial things for yourself there is little distinction between the 2.
This because patents are there to share the work without losing the copy right. With the same idea as with open source that when you share it will grow.
Don't be fooled about open source. It is not because you can freely "read" the code there are no patents in there and there is no copy right. If you can be bothered read the gpl, cpl and epl licences. or read this wiki page Eclipse Public License - Wikipedia
Best regards
Jantje

Jantje:
I never stated that patents and open source are not very different. But if you are in china and the patent is in USA it is 100% legal to copy and you have 100% information on how to do it. Even if you are a researcher or doing non commercial things for yourself there is little distinction between the 2.
This because patents are there to share the work without losing the copy right.
With the same idea as with open source that when you share it will grow.

Patents are to protect the commercial rights to an idea. It has nothing to do with copyrights.
i.e. it controls who has the right to make a product for sale or use the idea in a commercial product.
Individuals are always allowed to use patented ideas and implement them in their
own personal products.

Don't be fooled about open source. It is not because you can freely "read" the code there are no patents in there and there is no copy right. If you can be bothered read the gpl, cpl and epl licences. or read this wiki page Eclipse Public License - Wikipedia
Best regards
Jantje

Duh...
I'm quite familiar with the patent/trademark systems (US vs EU vs Asia vs rest of world)
as well as copyrights and various licensing: gpl (v2 vs v3) bsd, apachie, creative commons, and a
variety of others. How they work and the limitations involving closed vs open source in derivative works.
I have more than a dozen issued patents many of which are International not just US with 3 currently still
pending. I was founder of company that we took public in the late 90's (EFNT on nasdaq)
and then grew to 800 employees and finally sold it for $1B a few years later,
so I'm very familiar with many of the intricacies of the patent system
(including the recent US changes from "first to invent" to "first to file")
as well as the advantages and issues surrounding using
open source in commercial products.


There are many different "open source" licenses and as a business if you choose to deal
with open source (use it or give it away) you have understand what it really means by
understanding the risks of using it in your products and potential risks to the profits
(businesses are about making money right?) and how it can potentially enable competitors.

Some licenses like LGPL are essentially "freeware" where GPL v3 is at the opposite end of the spectrum
which requires opening up anything that touches it as well as some patent enforcement restrictions.
And there are many that land in between.

(I'll drop out now as this is moving into a open source philosophy discussion which
is way off topic)

--- bill

bill

bperrybap:

Don't be fooled about open source. It is not because you can freely "read" the code there are no patents in there and there is no copy right. If you can be bothered read the gpl, cpl and epl licences. or read this wiki page Eclipse Public License - Wikipedia
Best regards
Jantje

Duh...
EDIT: Personal add removed


EDIT: repetition of what is in the provided link removed

(I'll drop out now as this is moving into a open source philosophy discussion which
is way off topic)

--- bill

Can you explain why you say "Duh..." and add a lot of text. I mean I don't see the relation between "Duh..." and the remainder of the text.
Maybe "Duh..." is not denigrating in your country but it is in mine. So at least I would like to know what makes you do this.
Jantje

Can we please keep the same old arguement out of this topic ?

And a link http://arduino.cc/ArudinoDUE to a page that will contain more info soon (whatever that may be)
I'll buy one just to make sure my plugin works with it.

Best regards
Jantje

I came across a flickr set of the Due dev board. General pinout is very Mega2560-ish but looking here I notice SCL1 and SDA1 next to AREF, plus a 10-pin header where the 6-pin ICSP for 16U2 is on the Mega2560r3. And here A12..A15 have changed to DA0, DA1, CAN RX0, CAN TX0.

SCL1 and SDA1 next to AREF

All new boards have the I2C signals over there I think.

10-pin header where the 6-pin ICSP for 16U2 is on the Mega2560r3

That will be the JTAG header for the SAM.

A12..A15 have changed to DA0, DA1, CAN RX0, CAN TX0.

CAN and the DAC (I guess), well they had to come out somewhere.

Also those pics have been around for a while, they must be of an earlier version as there is only a single USB jack, the current board has two.


Rob

Does anybody know what the difference between the two jacks are?

funkyguy4000:
Does anybody know what the difference between the two jacks are?

The following is from the PDF Telecommando linked to...

The Due hast two micro USB connectors one
intended for debugging purpose and a secondo one
capablo ef acting as a USB host, allowing externa USB
peripherals such as mouse, keyboards, smartphones,
etc. to be connected to the Arduino Due.

So they are probably completely separate as far as communication, and you can probably think of one as working similar to the USB port on the Uno and the other as more like a fully integrated USB host shield.

@funkyguy4000

One USB port is connected directly to the processor and has an OTG connector, this means that it can be used as an USB host to connect devices like mouse, keyboard, android phones etc
The Second USB port is connected to the UART0 via the usual atmega16u2 we use on the other boards. this port is used for programming and communicating with the board. This allows you to develop projects using the USB host without having to plug and unplug cables all the time.

The board has a 4 pin SWD connector that can be used to debug code using a SWD/JTAG dongle. There is also a footprint for a 14pin jtag connector.

The pictures robotgrrl posted on the flickr account are of an old beta board we gave out in may to a number of beta testers and it didn't have the second USB port.

We upgraded the power supply to a DCDC converter that can provide enough current to the USB host so that now the Due can be used as an ADK2 development board

if you have other questions, shoot!

m

Just a couple layout questions.

  1. The Due obviously looks very "mega-ish", does this mean that the pins will be laid out in a similar fashion? Having the PWM pins over here, the communication over here, digital there, and analog over there?

  2. If I'm not mistaken, the Due has been in development since the release of the new R3 layout, will the SDA and SCL lines be mapped to analog pins or will they be broken out like on the new R3 boards?

  1. this is the first board we make with the SAM3X but not the last one :wink: we decided to adopt the mega layout to help people migrate their apps as easily as possible. In the future we'll explore different layouts.

  2. The Due follows the R3 layout that we developed to make the standard layout more flexible/homogeneous (i.e. having easy access to the I2C) and to support boards operating at voltages other than 5v (IOREF PIN)
    Unfortunately the mega328 on the UNO has I2c multiplexed on two analog pins while already on the mega (or leonardo) they are on different pins. Any current Arduino boards is based on R3 and solves the problem by placing I2C in the same position on every

m

Is the DUE is using a compatible shield footprint as the Uno/Mega?
If so, Is the DUE 5V tolerant on the inputs?
Or are users potentially going to be burning up inputs when they attempt
to use their existing 5V shields on the DUE?

In other words, if the DUE is backwards compatible with existing shields,
how do you prevent users from damaging their DUE when plugging in 5V shields?

--- bill

bperrybap:
Is the DUE is using a compatible shield footprint as the Uno/Mega?
If so, Is the DUE 5V tolerant on the inputs?
Or are users potentially going to be burning up inputs when they attempt
to use their existing 5V shields on the DUE?

In other words, if the DUE is backwards compatible with existing shields,
how do you prevent users from damaging their DUE when plugging in 5V shields?

--- bill

That was discussed by several of us in this or possible another Due based thread. I believe some of us feel that many a new beginner will most likely (or at least potentially) suffer damage from using non-Due compatible shields. Venders of shields will probably have to be burdened to state with their shield offerings if their shield products work with Due only or older arduino + Due or older 5vdc arduinos only. I don't see a good case for why they didn't give the Due a whole new shield footprint to work with?

Lefty

retrolefty:

bperrybap:
Is the DUE is using a compatible shield footprint as the Uno/Mega?
If so, Is the DUE 5V tolerant on the inputs?
Or are users potentially going to be burning up inputs when they attempt
to use their existing 5V shields on the DUE?

In other words, if the DUE is backwards compatible with existing shields,
how do you prevent users from damaging their DUE when plugging in 5V shields?

--- bill

That was discussed by several of us in this or possible another Due based thread. I believe some of us feel that many a new beginner will most likely (or at least potentially) suffer damage from using non-Due compatible shields. Venders of shields will probably have to be burdened to state with their shield offerings if their shield products work with Due only or older arduino + Due or older 5vdc arduinos only. I don't see a good case for why they didn't give the Due a whole new shield footprint to work with?

Lefty

From the SAM3X datasheets...

Voltage on Input Pins
with Respect to Ground....................................-0.3V to + 4.0V

So the IC's I/O pins certainly can't take 5 VDC logic. I suppose it's possible for there to be optional FET based level shifter circuitry for each I/O pin, but it's very unlikely they included it on the stock Due...

retrolefty:

bperrybap:


In other words, if the DUE is backwards compatible with existing shields,
how do you prevent users from damaging their DUE when plugging in 5V shields?
--- bill

That was discussed by several of us in this or possible another Due based thread.


I've seen a few discussions on this.
I was wanting to hear a definitive answer straight from the horses mouth, somebody
on the Arduino team, perhaps Massimo Banzi
as most of the discussion about this that has happened so far is from/by folks that don't have access
to the real product and as such is speculation on what will/won't be in the final version
of the product.

--- bill

retrolefty:
I don't see a good case for why they didn't give the Due a whole new shield footprint to work with?

I really don't think there is one. I suspect this decision to continue with the "legacy" shield footprint for the "Due" will be recognised in hindsight to be a significant blunder, as well as an opportunity lost.

I've been arguing for ages that the current backplane arrangement leaves a lot to be desired and when I first heard about the Due I hoped there would be a change. No such luck.

I guess it's hard to orphan 500+ existing shields, but if some/many/most of them won't work anyway it doesn't matter.

I think that "How many will work?" is the $64 question.


Rob

@pico

As I just mentioned this is the first board with the SAM3X we're going to release so there is plenty of opportunities to create different layouts (as a matter of fact we have a new layout we've been playing with for a while)

I think there is a lot of people who prefer to re-use as much as possible of what they currently have before they have to throw everything away.. Our current Eth and Wifi shields, to mention two, work with the Due as they are able to detect and adapt to the whatever voltage the main board is operating at.

Making the board 5v tolerant would have made the it way too expensive. The market is now full of heavily subsidised (even sold at loss...) products that make it quite difficult to fight these battles.

The beauty of open source is that in a few days time you will be able to download the Arduino Due eagle file, design a much better layout and sell your own boards benefiting from our lack of vision :slight_smile:

@Graynomad
we introduced the R3 layout a long time ago and we explained why the IOREF pin is there... some people understood and implemented the correct measures to make their shields compatible, some others didn't ... you'll see a lot more shields made available with the full implementation of R3

m