New 32-Bit Arduino Board Set to Fuel Next-Gen Open Source Hardware

Have you found some time to do any tinkering with Arduino? It's an open source electronics platform based on a microcontroller and microprocessor with I/O capabilities that allow it to drive many kinds of surprising inventions. We've covered the platform and the community that creates with it before. And now, the Arduino Due has arrived. It's a major upgrade to the 8-bit, 16-MHz microcontroller platform that now offers a 32-bit, 84-MHz processor. Look for a wave of new Arduino inventions based on it.

According to the Arduino site:

"The Arduino Due is a microcontroller board based on the Atmel SAM3X8E ARM Cortex-M3 CPU (datasheet). It is the first Arduino board based on a 32-bit ARM core microcontroller. It has 54 digital input/output pins (of which 12 can be used as PWM outputs), 12 analog inputs, 4 UARTs (hardware serial ports), a 84 MHz clock, an USB OTG capable connection, 2 DAC (digital to analog), 2 TWI, a power jack, an SPI header, a JTAG header, a reset button and an erase button."

The Arduino boards are increasingly popular with roboticists, and this new one should give them much more functionality to work with.

Check out the Arduino gallery for a snapshot of how enthusiastic the community surrounding this hardware/software platform is.  

Want to get started on your own Arduino project? If so, decide which type of project you're going to start with here, and get going with introductory material here. And as we've noted, sooner or later, someone is going to invent something with a lot of commercial potential based on Arduino, and the platform is proof that open source hardware has a future.