Arduino TRE

http://arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoardTre

by x43b • 11 years ago

79 61 11 years ago

arduino.cc

emranemran• 11 years ago

Wasn't this board announced a while back?

kasbah• 11 years ago

Yes, ages ago.

mayoff• 11 years ago

What is the advantage of this over a Raspberry Pi?

damian20002• 11 years ago

Two I can think of ... it includes a low cost Atmel microcontroller so it can be used for prototyping low cost/low power usage applications, in the same way as the original Arduino. Its compatible with Arduino shields.

Fradow• 11 years ago

There are several advantages:

- both 5V and 3.3V logic, meaning you can use pretty much any part without level shifters

- analog inputs (which are really lacking on Raspberry Pi if you want to use sensors)

- 4 USB host ports (only the Pi 2 has as much)

- the simplicity of Arduino for electronics, coupled with a Linux for other tasks

On the other hand, I expect it to be more expensive, and probably less powerfull than a Raspberry Pi. It is definitely aimed to big electronics project that requires both a lot of GPIO and a full-fledged OS, for which you would formerly use a board running Linux + an Arduino

aselzer2• 11 years ago

also: 7 hardware PWM outputs (the Pi has one)

reidrac• 11 years ago

"both 5V and 3.3V logic, meaning you can use pretty much any part without level shifters"

Are you sure about that? It can provide different voltages in different pins, but the ATmega32u4 will work with 5v logic (if it is like the Leonardo, at 16MHz will be 5v), so you're in the same situation really and you won't be able to use a lot of 3.3v logic ICs without a translator.

I can be wrong though and this one operates in a different way, but doubt it.

EDIT: ignore me, the page says it has 3.3v logic pins.

EDIT 2: right! they're provided by the Sitara processor and not the AVR, so I wasn't 100% wrong after all ;)

See: https://github.com/CICCIOSGAMINO/arduino_TRE

Narishma4• 11 years ago

Pi 1 B+ has 4 USB ports as well.

iwwr3• 11 years ago

Arduino has more digital I/O pins and 6-7 pins that can do analog output (via PWM). This new Arduino has even more pins and can do both 3.3V and 5V logic, though I fail to see the advantage of mixing those up. Overall, Arduino draws lower power too.

In any event, if you're looking for something with more pins, beaglebone black or olinuxino have them.

https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/A20/A20-OLinuXIno-... (that one has 1GB of RAM, gigabit ethernet and SATA2 capable of running a small laptop HDD off the board's power)

Sanddancer5• 11 years ago

Gigabit ethernet that's not dangling off the USB bus, lots of I/O, a realtime micro that's well integrated into the board's architecture, USB OTG, analog inputs. This board seems much more useful if you need lower latency timing, where the Pi seems more useful if you need a small board to stick somewhere and do a bit of number crunching.

jbermudes• 11 years ago

The page seems to only say 10/100. Is there a correction somewhere else?

agumonkey• 11 years ago

I find it sad that RPI managed to suck the 'educational' market because of the price point, when the design is extremly obscure. Unless they planned to turn teenagers into hardware reverse engineer...

rdrey• 11 years ago

Cool! Has anyone heard of the price yet?

pronoiac• 11 years ago

Huh, there's an errant "Clock Speed: 16 MHz" there.

damian20002• 11 years ago

That's for the Atmel microcontroller part, the ARM processer is listed lower down

georgemcbay• 11 years ago

It isn't errant, there are just two processors handling different tasks.

This is basically a BeagleBone Black with an integrated Arduino (for low-level compatibility with the Arduino shield ecosystem) that the more full-featured (but less real-time friendly) Linux-running part of the board can drive.

The Atmel ATmega32u4 (the Arduino bit) is 16MHz, the more full-featured Linux/ARM part runs on a 1GHz Sitara AM3359AZCZ100 (ARM Cortex-A8) just like the BeagleBone Black.

ftollenaar• 11 years ago

So... Essentially an UDOO, but less powerful and (or so it seems from the picture) a different pin layout, making it incompatible with existing shields..?

iwwr3• 11 years ago

It looks compatible with Uno shields, but adds more pins at 3.3V on the side.

ambrop72• 11 years ago

Agree. It's time to leave AVR uC's behind. There are many ARM chips on the market which are both faster and cheaper than AVR.

CamperBob24• 11 years ago

Fast and cheap are not the only criteria. What ARM chips have the same peripherals as an AVR?

Animats2• 11 years ago

There's already the Arduino DUE, which has the Arduino form factor and pinout, with a very lightly configured ARM processor. It's supported by the Arduino toolchain, and you get more memory and a CPU with floating point hardware. It's far too small a machine to run Linux, but it's the next step up when an ARM CPU is just too wimpy.

How do the two CPUs of the TRE talk to each other? Shared memory? I2C? USB?

zecken• 11 years ago

Probably UART, the same way the FTDI chip in new UNOs talks to the AVR. In any case, the reason having an ARM cpu w/ an AVR is beneficial is because you get the linux environment but real-time hardware GPIO access. This is far better than the software scheduling that bogs down RPis and makes it very difficult to do timing intensive tasks.

makomk2• 11 years ago

Except that the SoC they're using already has two PRU coprocessors designed for realtime IO support, and they have the advantage of being able to DMA to and from main memory rather than being limited to a slow serial link to the main CPU.

ambrop72• 11 years ago

Actually the SAM3X8E does not have an FPU.

Animats2• 11 years ago

Ouch. You're right.

minthd3• 11 years ago

One wonders why they didn't combine the due and the beagle bone - it would have only simplified things.

Could it be that there are incompatibility issues between it and the older arduino ?

falcolas2• 11 years ago

Probably because the BBB can't really handle realtime applications - in its default form it's running Debian Linux these days.

The microcontroller can take care of the realtime interaction, while letting the ARM processor running Linux handle the higher level logic.

Of course, it's easy to debate how much your average Microcontroller project really requires a dedicated realtime processor, but that's neither here nor there.

esistgut• 11 years ago

"Arduino TRE, the first Arduino board manufactured in the U.S." As italian I feel a little bit sad about Arduino today being american hardware fully assembled in America. I wonder if they still print Italy and the italian flag on the PCB...

floatboth• 11 years ago

https://makezine.com/2015/03/19/massimo-banzi-fighting-for-a...

tl;dr "if people bought an Arduino board made in Italy in the last year thinking they were supporting the project they should know that we didn’t receive any money for it despite the fact that we designed, documented, maintained and supported those products" – Massimo Banzi

_paulc• 11 years ago

The AM355x already has 2 x 32bit Programmable Realtime Units (PRU) [1] so the AVR seems a bit redundant (other than compatibility with existing shields and ease of programming)

[1] http://elinux.org/BeagleBone_PRU_Notes

danellis4• 11 years ago

Yeah, I don't see the point of the on-board AVR at all. It can't be just a voltage thing, because I'm sure they already have an ARM-only Arduino with shield headers.

fest• 11 years ago

Compatiblity with existing libraries and example code for other Arduinos is the key here. I find it surprising too, but there are people who do not really want to know all the low-level details but get the result quickly :)

avinassh• 11 years ago

There are so many Arduinos. It was daunting for me when I was starting out. Following guides helped me to get started:

- https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/arduino-comparison-guid...

- https://www.sparkfun.com/arduino_guide

Do you know any more noob friendly comparison sites/articles?

falcolas2• 11 years ago

I'm afraid I don't. I think it ultimately comes down to what you want to do with it.

Personally, I'd recommend the Uno: it is a great basic Arduino platform which can handle most projects which utilize a micro controller. Once you've prototyped your project with the Uno and identified if you need more IO pins, or more speed, or a smaller unit, then you can look into replacing the Uno with one of the more specialized versions, and use the Uno to prototype your next project.

wolfgke2• 11 years ago

Please correct me, but doesn't the GPU of Texas Instrument's Sitara AM3359AZCZ100 require a closed firmware blob - in other words the Arduino TRE will be a partly closed hardware (not in Arduino's open hardware spirit)?

Narishma4• 11 years ago

The rule of thumb is if the GPU is not from Intel, then it requires a binary blob.

wolfgke2• 11 years ago

Is it at least possible to write an own OS (by using the firmware blob) or is the blob married to (GNU/)Linux?

davexunit• 11 years ago

Ouch, that would really suck. If this is true, does anyone know if the blob can be removed so the system will still function without hardware accelerated graphics? This is how my Novena functions currently, until the free software replacement is ready to go.

minthd3• 11 years ago

I'm not sure if arduino is a good platform to spend time on, see[1].

One the other hand, the mbed:

"With all the investments ARM is putting into the mbed and the mbed-os(and it's huge amount of internet of things features) ,with features like automatic selection of sleep modes via easy to use sleep api's[1] , the better though out API(things like FastPWM, FastIO, SIMPLEDMA and others) , the community being more professional so it probably means better code, and the better license enabling easy use in production , and the large amount of ARM microcontrollers availble for it, isn't this the better time investment for the future ?" [2].

[1]http://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=253582.0

[2]http://www.eetimes.com/messages.asp?piddl_msgthreadid=47423&...

Sanddancer5• 11 years ago

I've got one of the NXP mbed boards, and it's an interesting piece of hardware, however, the current mbed toolchain is kind of ridiculous. In order to use the more interesting features, you're pretty much required to use their web-based IDE, and forego a lot of the nice features of, say, eclipse. Also, I have issues with certain decisions they've made, like having floating point only libraries for PWM, which means you have to waste a lot of clocks, and code, just to make the lights work.

Then again, with AVRs, I'm using Atmel Studio a lot these days for similar reasons instead of the Arduino environment. The abstraction layers don't quite mesh with what I'm trying, which means writing I'm writing around the Arduino a lot more than I'm writing for the Arduino. Perhaps it's just time for getting back to basics with the lower level libraries.

minthd3• 11 years ago

With regards to PWM issues you've mentioned , have you looked at alternative libraries ? a rough search brough me this[1](and there might be others), an it claims to solve most of the floating point problem.

> In order to use the more interesting features, you're pretty much required to use their web-based IDE,

What features are those ?

[1]http://developer.mbed.org/users/jocis/code/HighPWM/docs/923b...

jbuzbee• 11 years ago

Discussion of the ESP286 here on Hacker news seems limited. Looks like a great alternative for low-cost use. It's a $5 microcontroller board with WIFI which now can be programmed with the Arduino development environment:

http://makezine.com/2015/04/01/esp8266-5-microcontroller-wi-...

rasz_pl• 11 years ago

so a BeagleBone Black with adruino on its head goes to the doctors office. Doctor asks 'what seems to be the problem?'. Arduino replies "I've got something stuck to my ass!".

but now at 1.5 times the price of individual components! BB is $55, minis are $3. This thing will be what, ~$70? Arduino abomination glued to the AR9331 is ~$80 (Yun), while bare atheros chips are $5 in china, whole routers ~$15. I dont see the point of this new one either. Even if they somehow got the best deal ever out of TI it will not be economical compared to BBB.

Arduino TRE

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