A closer look at Atmel’s Xplained Pro kits

Atmel’s comprehensive lineup of Xplained Pro boards offers engineers everything they need to start designing microcontroller (MCU) applications in minutes. First off, the boards are quite easy to connect, linking to PCs with just a USB cable.

As expected, the boards are automatically recognized by Atmel Studio, facilitating direct access to example projects and documentation. Meanwhile, hardware extension boards provide easy access to all functionality of the MCU.

Currently, Xplained Pro kits are grouped into three primary categories:

• Evaluation kits – Lowest cost kits starting at $39 for evaluating MCUs and developing with example projects in Atmel Studio.
• Starter kits – Low-cost bundle of MCU and extension boards starting at $99 for rapid application prototyping and development with Atmel Studio and Atmel Software Framework.
• Extension kits – Boards with additional functionality, connecting to Xplained Pro MCU boards through standardized connectors.

On the evaluation side, Atmel offers the SAM D20 Xplained Pro, SAM4N Xplained Pro, SAM4S Xplained Pro, SAM4L Xplained Pro and the ATmega256RFR2 Xplained Pro.

In terms of extension boards, there is the I/O1 Xplained Pro, OLED1 Xplained Pro, SLCD1 Xplained Pro and the PROTO1 Xplained Pro.

Interested in learning more? Be sure to stay tuned, because next time we’ll be getting up close and personal with Atmel’s MCU Xplained (evaluation) kits.

A closer look at Atmel’s SAM D20 Xplained Pro eval kit

Atmel’s SAM D20 lineup is based on the ARM Cortex- M0+ core, setting a new benchmark for flexibility and ease-of-use. The recently launched MCU series is ideal for a number of low-power, cost-sensitive industrial and consumer devices, such as GPS trackers, appliance controllers, intelligent remotes and optical transceivers.

Perhaps most importantly, the SAM D20 also offers engineers easy access to an expansive array of software and hardware tools, including Atmel Studio 6 (free IDE with compiler) as well as the SAM D20 Xplained Pro evaluation kit.

The $39  kit supports the Atmel I/O1 Xplained Pro, OLED1 Xplained Pro and PROTO1 Xplained Pro extension boards, all of which can be purchased individually.

In terms of key specs, the board is powered by a SAMD20J18 microcontroller and features one mechanical reset button, a single mechanical user pushbutton (wake-up, bootloader entry or general purpose), a yellow user LED, 32.768kHz crystal and three Xplained Pro extension headers.

Additional specs include an embedded debugger, Auto-ID for board identification in Atmel Studio 6.1, one yellow status LED, one green board power LED, Data Gateway Interface (SPI, I²C, 4 GPIOs) and a virtual COM port (CDC).

Atmel’s SAM D20 Xplained Pro evaluation kit can be purchased here for $39.