I was just looking at Twitter again, trying to decide if it was worthwhile to create an account or not and typed in ‘Arduino’ to the search box and found out that Arduino has release 2 new boards, the Ardunio Uno and the Ardunio Mega 2560. I checked out the specs and they both look pretty good so I ordered one from SparkFun. Both boards replace the FTDI USB chip with a Atmel ATMega8u with some custom programming which is supposed to provide improved bandwidth over the FTDI solution.
According to SparkFun electronics you can plug the new Arduino directly into PCs, Linux and Macs without any special driver files. It looks like use on the PC just requires an info file (.inf) so that windows knows how to handle it. You can have the Arduino show up as various devices, allowing you to create software and have the Arduino emulate various hardware(with your own code) So it could be a mouse, keyboard, joystick, keypad, etc.
The Ardunio Mega 2560 is pretty similar to the Arduino Mega, but the 2560 has an ATmega2560 with 256KB of flash memory with 8k available for the boot loader while the Arduino Mega has an ATMega1280 128KB of flash memory with 4k available for the boot loader. They both run 16Mhz, have 54 Digital I/O pins, 14 of these digital I/O pins can be used for PWM (large servo projects for example) and there are also 16 pins which can be used for analog inputs for your projects. SRAM and EEPROM on both are still 8KB and 4KB respectively.
The biggest benefit of this upgrade it seems will be the improved USB interface chip which doesn’t require drivers and the additional 128kb of memory for your code to allow you to build larger projects.
I’ve been thinking lately about wanting to build a multi-legged servo driven robot or perhaps a quadracopter / hexacopter and see what those projects are like to work on. Winter is on its way, and those without projects end up with cabin fever. I have a lot of spare servos floating around in need a project and with all of those Analog inputs on the Ardunio Mega 2560 there’s a lot of possibilities for sensors and the like and a fair amount of room for coding.
I would say my coding skills could be improved quite a bit above what they are now. I’m sure enough hours burned away in the middle of the night while huge fluffy snowflakes fall outside and pile up on my car, yard and driveway snowing me in for a week so I could actually focus and complete.. A.. PROJECT.. would be too much to ask, but I can always hope!
I have an Arduino Duemilanove that I’ve had a lot of fun with and I’m sure it will continue to get used on a lot of projects as well, I don’t think I need to order an Ardunio Uno to replace it though, none of my code so far has pushed me beyond it limits, although it would be kind of nice to get rid of the FTDI interface for the faster new interface.
The new Arduino arrived after a few days of waiting so I took some more photos of it, it looks pretty good and now I’m just trying to think of a good project to create with it. I don’t like doing ‘unboxings’ on a product that a few thousand other people have already gotten, so I’ll spare you the over-dramatic video and giddy childlike commentary. The Arduino Mega 2560 does come in a pretty fancy looking box though. I took this picture AFTER opening it so there is a bit of a tear.
Arduino Mega 2560 Box
And when you open up the box for the Arduino it looks like the photo below. Shiny and colorful and a graphically nice presentation. This is one of the few hobbyist items I’ve bought that has such a nice presentation.
Arduino Mega 2560 Opened Box
Okay, so if you’re curious what the new Ardunio Mega board looks like I took some fairly high resolution photos before you to look at.
Arduino Mega 2560 Front
Arduino Mega 2560 Back
Welp there it is, run out and get your own and start writing more extensive code or play around with the improved USB interface, I bet there’s a ton of neat ideas to explore with that.
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