Highly Anticipated 32-bit "Due" due When?

[Jantje]

David
Thanks for the effort.
If you place a price on one of the 1000 first due's I (and probably many other) may want to order one before you made it 
For sure if it has debugging capabilities.
Best regards
Jan

[avenue33]

We realized that it was time to make things a little better and one of the most important ones was to reach as many as possible by:

- having everything open: designs, documentation, software
- being crossplatform: making tools that could run on any computer, anywhere in the world
- being very active teaching to people, not caring about their initial resources or experience
- making it competitive in price: we would not include any expenses coming from R&D into the actual design, like others did before us

I like this statement of vision.

[terryking228]

David, First a very large thanks for all your work and dedication on Arduino.  I'm sure it took you on a wild ride. Many of us have enjoyed the trip a lot also.

Could you answer, or point to, one more thing:

- How can a moderately technically proficient person (Hardware, software or both)  get involved right now:
  - Get in the queue to buy an early Due version
  - Get connected to the development / beta effort and contribute

I've read quite a bit, without being in the active group, and I still have no idea how to do those two things.

I know there are risks in adding people and connections: "Brook's Law" = "Adding manpower to a late software project will make it later!". I worked for IBM and I have met Frederick Brooks and I have worked on a software project that lost $11,000,000 proving it yet again.  I believe.

But I want to help!

[Leon Heller]

David,

Thanks for the update. I was wondering about the delay.

I've got a couple of the PIC32-based chipKIT "Arduinos". How does the Due compare with that?

[randomvibe]

Arduino has answered why the Due is late.  Basically, they ran into technical difficulties and busy with other projects.  They were very wise to avoid another release date for the Due because this forum will keep them honest.  Glad to hear the Due is in work.  I suspected a complete abandonment of the project.  Glad to read I was wrong.  Let's face it, Italy is ground zero for the renaissance of modular microcontrollers.

After reading David's response from Arduino, I realized the crux of their success is two-fold and difficult to emulate.  First, the purposeful grass roots exposure at colleges and universities and usage by eager and energetic students made Arduino extremely popular.  That kind of exposure is very difficult to buy.  Then came "Make" magazine - more exposure - every month.  Second reason for their success: price.

Two questions for Arduino:  (I know, this is a long shot)
1.  What is the projected price for the basic Due?
2.  When will the Due be available?

[retrolefty]

It's still over Due..........

Lefty

[randomvibe]

Impressive and eye opening documentary about the story of Arduino (link below).  The opening title and music reminds me of dada art.  What I find striking about this story is how international this whole Arduino endeavor is.  Also striking is that the main force elevating Arduino is not $profit but rather education, for technical people and artists.  Anyway, excellent production.

http://arduino.cc/blog/2012/02/20/the-arduino-documentary-2/

[ArduinoAndy]

Everyday the Arduino Due being late reminds me of the old silicon valley term "VAPORWARE"  ]

[graynomad]

Yes it's a shame, David C gave a pretty good explanation the gist of which (I think) is that there is too much to do an too few people to do it.

Many of us have offered to help but I guess throwing more engineers at a problem is not always the thing to do (there's a famous saying about that isn't there?).

That said you think you could farm out some things, like porting the libraries across. Many of the modules would be autonomous I would think, give SPI to one person, I2C to another etc. Maybe that is in fact what's happening with some selected developers, it's just such a big job.

_____
Rob

[Texy]

Looks like the Raspberry Pi will be delivered before the Due.
T.

[Grumpy_Mike]

Yes but the Raspberry Pi is some what crippled from an I/O point of view. Of the 56 GPIO pins there are only 14 brought out to the header. There are a number of expansion boards in the pipe line but the "official one" in effect sticks an arduino on these pins and gives some port expansion. But this does not include I2C and will cost about £100, that is 4 times the price of the Pi itself.

On the main board there is no built in A/D and the drive on the 3V3 digital pins is some what minimal, so no driving LEDs at any great brightness without an expansion board.
It looks like it will be more of a programmers system than a physical computing platform.

My Pi's delivery has been put back from the middle of April to the start of May. I was lucky and managed to get an order in on the first day but about 12 hours after the start.

[graynomad]

It looks like it will be more of a programmers system than a physical computing platform.

Looks like it. I just spent a couple of hours reading some of the RPi forum. Many of the comments are interesting, things like "Wow it's got I2C, I'll be able to talk to a sensor", "Can I connect the RS232 to USB?" and about 20 questions about if the IO is 5v or 3v3, and that's just on one thread!

It seems that the audience for this is coming from a different place to the average Arduino user.

expansion boards in the pipe line but the "official one"

Is that the Gert board or another?

______
Rob

[Grumpy_Mike]

Is that the Gert board

Yes, Gert is the hardware guy for the entire project, and his board is his own sideline.
I asked if it was going to be open source, but he said as he had spent a lot of his own money on the project so far he hoped to recoup some of it from sales of the boards. Can't exactly blame him for that, but it would not be the way I would have done it. He also seems to be trying ( and failing at the moment ) to implement the debugWire in the 328 system. So you can tell he is not so very experienced if he thinks such a simple processor needs this.

Many of the comments are interesting

Agreed, the comments fall into a few narrow categories:-
1) Sycophantic - you are all doing such a wonderful job ( despite the evidence of such a botched launch )
2) The amazed innocents - wow only £100 for an interface board we have to pay £800 for a control board at my school.
3) The pissed off - you promised a computer at $25 and now I am expected to pay tax and carriage on top of that!
4) The Linux code nerds - I am porting "big bits 6.3" to the Pi  ( who knows or cares what that is )
5) The haven't got a clue about interfacing but this sounds like it should be an impressive question - what is the pitch of the header.

[graynomad]

Sycophantic /The amazed innocents

Them's the words I was looking for

Things like (I paraphrase)

"Gee I can't believe you brought the serial port out to a header, what a fantastic design"

And the endless discussions about the header pins being NC or DNC.

______
Rob

[HULK]

Any news of when the Arduino DUE will be ready?
The first statements pointed at January 2012 but that has passed.