Is there any official release date for the Arduino Zero?

bobcousins:
.... have not produced an mbed enabled board, an no-one else has either.

Just a couple weeks ago, someone from mbed contacted me about a port they're doing for Teensy 3.1. They're doing it, not me (full disclosure - I'm the guy who makes Teensy). My understanding is it's currently only available in some beta version, but will probably move to their mainline version in a matter of months. I personally haven't used it yet.

I've seen mention that several of Freescale's and ST's boards are already mbed enabled. I personally haven't used those either, but I've seen the marketing material claiming they're mbed enabled.

I have no idea whether mbed plans to support Arduino Zero. But from what I've seen, it seems the new ARM-owned mbed is interested in supporting pretty much all ARM-based boards. Whether they're willing to touch a product that's the subject of an ongoing legal dispute / battle is a good question. My guess is they and others will likely wait for the legal drama to conclude before doing much with Zero.

Which Zero ?
Now there are two Zero (one US and one Italian) , two arduino compagnies, two arduino web sites and a trial.
see here

It's heartbreaking

I emailed the editor at makezine about the Arduino dispute over 3 weeks ago, seems they have just caught up. I'd like to see Michael Weinberg's view on the legal issues.

Weird thing about the pricing of the Zero Pro, it seems to be more expensive than the Due?

Genuine Arduino Due sells at approx $50, right?

Isn't Zero appearing around $45?

The sites I have looked at have Zero Pro more expensive than Due, here is 2 examples:

http://physicalcomputing.at/epages/f46ab952-295a-4f65-8ffa-38a4b8eec267.sf/de_DE/?ObjectPath=/Shops/f46ab952-295a-4f65-8ffa-38a4b8eec267/Categories/EntwicklungsBoards__Tools/Arduino

Perhaps Due is priced low (about same price as Mega) because it does not sell much, and they are hoping Zero Pro will be more popular. As it is, it seems to be underpowered or overpriced. Most Cortex M3 chips are cheaper than atmega256, I can't see why the BOM cost justifies the price.

Oh, yes, you're right. I guess I wasn't translating Euros & US Dollars.

I too had expected they'd price it somewhere between Uno & Due. Maybe the debugger chip is the justification for the higher price?

That seems like a tough sell without any debug support in the Arduino IDE. Strategically, it seems crazy to drive users away from Arduino's software and onto Atmel Studio. But then, splitting off from Arduino.cc in such a legally questionable and publicly dramatic way hardly seems like a good idea either!

Price of making a card has 3 main posts:

  1. the number of components to be mounted
  2. PCB area
  3. development costs

Price of a micro-controller:

  1. development cost
  2. cost of housing
  3. Once the manufacturing is stabilized, cost of the die depends only on the surface of the die.

Board sale price is the maximum price that buyers are willing to pay for the product.

But will people be willing to pay that much for an Arduino brand Cortex-M0+ ??

Of course, it's only a matter of time until cheap Chinese clones without the debug chip hit the market. Maybe the big name retailers (Sparkfun, Seeed, etc) will make their own clones?

But will people be willing to pay that much for an Arduino brand Cortex-M0+ ??

For me absolutely NO.
I would prefer STM32

  • I/O 5 volts tolerant
  • much output current capability
  • Second function : much redirection capability
  • very low price
  • form factor board much suitable
  • et caetera

But is there any STM32 with good Arduino compatibility?

Sure, there are lots of 3rd party products. My own products, which I'm not here to promote or mention by name, work great with most Arduino libraries. But that's because I personally port and fix nearly all libraries.

Is anyone really doing that for STM32? Or is the very old & outdated Maple IDE what's currently used for STM32?

Then again... it remains to be seen whether Arduino Zero will have good Arduino compatibility. Due certainly doesn't.

This whole issue's been around for a few months. I think it's unlikely that the legal battle will be resolved anytime soon.

Still... anybody up for trying out a ZERO PRO?

(offtopic)For me, I'm not THAT concerned about the Zero with the legal dispute. It's the TRE that I'm really worried about.

Arduino Wiring project with Hernando Barragan and Massimo Banzi exists from 2002.
The Arduino fork of 2005.
Is it not time to evolve ?
There is an enormous work to adapt avr librairies to ARM.
Rather than reinvent the wheel there is no better join forces.

There is Mbed project but Mbed is too professional to DIY.
Mbed is newer than Wiring / Arduino but not very far from the Arduino project.

There is room for a less professional approach with the same forum as this one which is the most successful of the Arduino project.

But it is not we who decide

68tjs:
Arduino Wiring project with Hernando Barragan and Massimo Banzi exists from 2002.
The Arduino fork of 2005.
Is it not time to evolve ?
There is an enormous work to adapt avr librairies to ARM.
Rather than reinvent the wheel there is no better join forces.

On the matter of whether there's any fork of Arduino that really supports STM32 well, that sounds like a "no".

I found this 3rd party board with (a smaller*) SAM D21 (256k)
--> https://www.mattairtech.com/index.php/development-boards/mt-d21e.html
it has no "debug chip",
it comes with a MSD-Bootloader.
(If you ask, you can get the sources of the MSD-Bootloader, from the seller)

*(it's a SAM D21E instead of the SAM D21G on the Arduino Zero)


interesting as well:
from the release notes here:
--> Arduino - Home

  • gcc: introduce bin compiling for Zero Pro programming port

sounds to me that is will be possible to flash without using the "debug chip" (but to use other known ways outside the arduino ide)

Arduino Zero Pro now available at Adafruit!
See for yourself!
$50

And not a single contiguous 8-bit port broken out at all...

@CrossRoads Why would you want one? The whole point of the Zero is 32 bit...

So? This forces you into doing everything serially, can't read a port to get state of 8 pins together. Waste of hardware.

Yeah, not good for libraries like UTFT.