Adam Conus sent us a nice little message about his antweight combat robot The Fly.: Western Allied Robotics is kicking off another year of antweight combat events and I need new motors. (Because I'm very, very hard on them!) Still, they're cheap and light. Check out- http://home.comcast.net/~conusa/adam.htm to see the robot complete with solarbotics sticker!
Arduino Uno and Neeeew York City!
Dave Hrynkiw
September 29, 2010
We're back from the Open Source Hardware Summit and the Maker Faire! Did lots; learned lots; got lots of touristy things done too.
One of the main highlights was meeting and listening to talks by three of the principle members of the Arduino team. They took pity on English-speakers, and named the new revision the Arduino "UNO" which we now have in stock, along with the upgraded Arduino Mega 2560. Here (in short) are the principle differences between the Duemilanove and the new Uno:
- It uses the same microcontroller as before, but is on a new re-branded board ("Uno") with slicker packaging & graphics. Oh, and a logo too!
- The pin lables are a bit tighter, and better show how they are used (hardware PWM is marked with a "~")
- Stickers! And neat paperwork explaining warrantee, how it was made and tested, and how each purchase helps protect a 1/2 square meter of Madagascar forest. Cool.
- CE / FCC certification. This is an important one, which assures electronics performance & noise control. Not an inexpensive proposition - kudos on getting this certification!
- Smaller bootloader - gives you more space for code for sketches!
- Better 3.3V regulator on board (old 3.3V came from FTDI chip, which was a bit wimpy)
- MOST IMPORTANT CHANGE: Replacement of the FTDI USB/TTL interface chip with an ATmega8U2 microcontroller. It's apparently cheaper, faster and definitely a whole lot more flexible. There's even a separate ICSP header on the UNO to let you reprogram this second microcontroller to make your Arduino UNO appear to be something vastly different USB device to your operating system.
The Open Source Hardware Summit was a busy day (went by very quick) and in general was quite well attended. Practically all the rock-stars of the genre were there, and all the talks were well worth the price of admission. We were happy to put our sponsorship behind an event of this quality, as it brought out very interesting discussions. I won't delve too deep into it here - view the archived video of the event, and see for yourself!
MORE POSTS
Tasty Treats and New Treats, Too
A couple of weeks back we held an open house for Calgary's Protospace group. Many BBQ'd items were consumed, many objects were lazored, and many people seemed to be walking around in a stupor of admiration for all the nifty bits and pieces of equipment we have on hand. We had a good time visiting […]
Ordering glitches
As part of our on-going website upgrades/patches, it seems that fixing one thing tends to ...botch... other aspects of the website. Right now, our shopping cart isn't cooperating. Trust us, if there was an aspect of the website we don't want going down, it's our order forms! We're on it right now, but in the […]
Courier Shipping Services Broken
Purolator is one of our more popular couriers, and they've recently rolled out an update that we thought wasn't going to affect our website. Guess what? Why yes; yes it has. And on a Friday afternoon, we are unable to get anybody on their end to help us pin down the error location. That's not […]
Solarbotics has been operating for more than 25 years, bringing electronics know-how and supplies to both the electronics professional and hobbyist. We'll be happy to help you too!
Solarbotics, Ltd. is not responsible for misprints or errors on product prices or information. For more information, please see our Terms and Conditions.
Warning: This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm.
Please visit www.P65Warnings.ca.gov for more information. This item was manufactured prior to August 31, 2018.