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[Reply #15 on:]

4k sram !!!

http://www.atmel.com/dyn/Products/product_card.asp?part_id=3633

Atmel say 8k for the ATmega1280 .

[Reply #16 on:]

Man this is crazy!!!

http://mcukits.com/2009/03/16/if-there-is-an-arduino-mega-then-there-should-be-a-megashield/

From Hackaday

[Reply #17 on:]

Yeah there seems to be some sort of mixups on the specs

The Atmega 1280 has about 8k of ram and 86 I/O and 16 PWM

however, the Atmega 128 has 4k of ram and 53 I/O, but with fewer PWM and analog I/O.

I wonder which one it is. If it is the 1280 I hope those are just typos, or they could be used for the oscillators and such as well...

[Reply #18 on:]

Were those pictures of the shield and the mega a rendering? Or did nkc manage to get his hands on one? how come he gets first dibs!!! lol

[Reply #19 on:]

There's too many pins for a shield the size of the actual MEGA to be very useful, I'd like to see a much larger shield (and it would be helpful to bring out several more power rails.

[Reply #20 on:]

I don't think those pictures are renderings.  I guess they had to put all the additional I/O at the end of the board to make sure all the shield were compatible.

Personally I like the look of the Illuminato and it only costs 35$(I don't have one)  I wonder how they are going to price the MEGA.  If it is over 55-60$ that might price itself out.

Any ideas on what to do with 4  UARTS.  Ethernet,Zigbee and usb all on one board  ;D

[Reply #21 on:]

I wonder which one it is. If it is the 1280 I hope those are just typos, or they could be used for the oscillators and such as well...

It has the 1280, so it should be 8K RAM.  I think lusorobotica.com made the mistake and hack-a-day just replicated it.

[Reply #22 on:]

Next ... Time to think what you could do with 128k of flash memory and 8k of sram.

Just have to hope that the price is right and they don`t price it out of the market.

[Reply #23 on:]

Just have to hope that the price is right and they don`t price it out of the market.

Thats probably the most interesting question about this whole development

What do you think the price will be?
If you take the duemilanove ($30) + extra price of 1280 ($10) + additional footprint and extra components ($10) = $50

Around $50 is the price I am expecting, if they price it much higher than that (+- 15%) I would consider it bad value

[Reply #24 on:]

The 1280 has four times more memory and I/O than the current board - so why isn't it worth four times the price?  

[Reply #25 on:]

Just have to hope that the price is right and they don`t price it out of the market.

Thats probably the most interesting question about this whole development

What do you think the price will be?
If you take the duemilanove ($30) + extra price of 1280 ($10) + additional footprint and extra components ($10) = $50

Around $50 is the price I am expecting, if they price it much higher than that (+- 15%) I would consider it bad value

What matters is the value, not only the price.

Let's say you have a $30 Arduino, but you need 1 additional serial port and 10 I/O ports...  Hmmm... problem can be solved adding i2c to UART chips, softserial, i2c to GPIO, multiplexing, charlieplexing (or whatever it is called) but you need to dedicate more time to program, more time to debug.  How much is it worth having those extra features in ONE single board?

If you don't need the additional features, then even $35 is expensive compared to a $30 Arduino... if you enjoy having all the features to play with, then HA!  priceless.  

When you take the $30 Arduino and start adding the additional cost of components, I hope you are adding the margin for the distributors as well  :'(... you cannot expect their profit to remain flat at a fixed amount, no matter the final price of the product!

BTW, for those who enjoy a good deal, I still have a bunch of Arduino boards (ATmega168) @ $22  8-)

[Reply #26 on:]

oh, cant wait to get one of this in my hands  

think 50$ should be a good price  

[Reply #27 on:]

I wonder if it has the pinout for jtagging? the chip supports it, and that would be a very useful addition for some developers. If it doesn't then I hope someone does a clone version with jtag functionality. This board is perfect though as I am starting a project that needs as many pwm and analog channels as I can get my hands on.

[Reply #28 on:]

On the ATmega1280, JTAG pins are shared with ADC4-7.  As this board uses ADC4-7 for Analog In, I "assume" JTAG fuse is not set.

You could easily add a JTAG adapter or use the MEGAshield to add a JTAG port to your design.

[Reply #29 on:]

Man this is crazy!!!

http://mcukits.com/2009/03/16/if-there-is-an-arduino-mega-then-there-should-be-a...

From Hackaday

I added some new pictures showing the Monster Truck (as called by ladyada): MEGAshield, with long legged pin headers to make it half stackable (It could go 100% stackable, if needed).

Pictures are in the same blog post as the original MEGAshield post:

http://mcukits.com/2009/03/16/if-there-is-an-arduino-mega-then-there-should-be-a-megashield/