If you recall back at Maker Faire Bay Area, we teamed up with Arduino to debut the Zero, a 32-bit development board powered by Atmel’s ARM-based SAMD21 microcontroller.
“The Zero board expands the Arduino family by providing increased performance to fuel the creativity of the Maker community,” explained Massimo Banzi, Arduino Co-Founder and CEO.
Additional key hardware specs include 256kb of flash, 32kb SRAM in a TQFP package and compatibility with 3.3V shields that conform to the Arduino R3 layout. The Arduino Zero board also boasts flexible peripherals along with Atmel’s Embedded Debugger (EDBG) – facilitating a full debug interface on the SAMD21 without the need for supplemental hardware.
And now for even bigger news…
After the success of its other beta programs, our friends at Arduino have announced that starting today, there will be a limited batch of 20 Arduino Zero available for Makers wanting to test the board.
According to Arduino, “The ideal beta-tester has time and interest in working on some specific issues we hope to accomplish with the beta-testing: we set up a list of tasks including writing examples, testing libraries and external hardware, and making projects that can be completed in a variety of timeframes.”
“Ultimately, our goal is to make the Zero welcoming to non-technical customers and useful for tech-savvy customers at the same time, like all of our products. To that end, we’d like feedback from you, as beta testers, about where we could simplify for beginners and explain or document better,” Arduino notes in its latest blog post.
Those interested in participating in the beta program are encouraged to fill out this application by August 17th. 20 applicants will be selected on August 21st to partake in the beta-testing phase, which is slated to last one month, ending around the start of Maker Faire New York.
For more information, you can head on over to Arduino’s original blog post here.
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