Here’s a look at a bunch of boards that caught our attention over the last 12 months. Feel free to share your favorites below!
“Hardware becomes a piece of culture that anyone can build upon, like a poem or a song.” – Massimo Banzi
Arduino Zero
A 32-bit Arduino powered by the Atmel | SMART SAM D21.
Arduino Wi-Fi Shield 101
An IoT shield with CryptoAuthentication that enables you to wirelessly connect your Arduino or Genuino with ease.
Arduino MKR1000
A powerful board that combines the functionality of the Zero and the connectivity of the Wi-Fi Shield.
Atmel | SMART SAM L21
A game-changing family of Cortex-M0+ MCUs that deliver power consumption down to 35 µA/MHz in active mode and 200nA in sleep mode.
BTLC1000
An ultra-low power Bluetooth Smart SoC with an integrated ARM Cortex-M0 MCU and transceiver.
Atmel | SMART SAMA5D2
An ARM Cortex-A5-based MPU that offers great features integrated into lower pin count packages, making it ideal for applications where security, power consumption and space constraints are key considerations.
Atmel | SMART SAM S70/E70
An ARM Cortex-M7-based MCU with a floating point unit (FPU) that’s ideal for connectivity and general purpose industrial applications.
ATmegaS128
A space-ready version of the popular ATmega128.
Adafruit Feather
A new line of development boards that, like it’s namesake, are thin, light and let your ideas fly. Expect Feather to become a new standard for portable MCU cores.
Adafruit METRO 328
An ATmega328-driven processor packed with plenty of GPIO, analog inputs, UART, SPI and I2C, timers, and PWM galore – just enough for most simple projects.
Arduino GEMMA
A miniature wearable board based on the ATtiny85.
Adafruit Bluefruit LE Micro
A board that rolls the versatility of the ATmega32U4 and the wireless connectivity of the SPI Bluefruit LE Friend all into one.
SparkFun Stepoko
An Arduino-compatible, 3-axis control solution that runs grbl software.
SparkFun SAM D21 Breakout
An Arduino-sized breakout for the ATSAMD21G18.
Bosch Sensortec BMF055
A compact 9-axis motion sensor, which incorporates an accelerometer, a gyroscope and a magnetometer along with an Atmel | SMART SAM D20 ARM Cortex M0+ core.
BNO055 Xplained Pro
A new extension board, which features a BNO055 intelligent 9-axis absolute orientation sensor, that connects directly to Atmel’s Xplained board making it ideal for prototyping projects for IoT apps.
SmartEverything
A prototyping platform that combines SIGFOX, BLE, NFC, GPS and a suite of sensors. Essentially, it’s the Swiss Army knife for the IoT.
Qduino Mini
A tiny, Arduino-compatible board with a built-in battery connector and charger built-in, as well as a fuel gauge.
Tessel 2
A dev board with a SAM D21 coprocessor, reliable Wi-Fi, an Ethernet jack, two USB ports and a system that runs real Node.js/io.js.
LattePanda
A Windows 10 single-board computer equipped with an Intel Atom x5-Z8300 Cherry Trail processor, 2GB of RAM, 32GB of storage and an ATmega32U4 coprocessor.
LightBlue Bean+
An Arduino-compatible board that is programmed wirelessly using Bluetooth Low Energy.
Makey Makey GO
A thumbdrive-shaped device that can transform ordinary objects into touch pads.
Hak8or
An uber mini, DIY board based on an Atmel | SMART AT91SAM9N12 that runs Linux via a USB drive.
Modulo
A set of tiny modular circuit boards that takes the hassle out of building electronics.
Microduino mCookie
A collection of small, magnetically stackable modules that can bring your LEGO projects to life.
The AirBoard
A compact, open source, wireless and power efficient dev board designed to learn, sketch and deploy prototypes out in the field.
Autonomo
A matchbox-sized, Arduino-compatible MCU powered by a small solar panel.
Helium
An integrated platform that brings the power of the cloud to the edge of the network, enabling you to observe, learn and capture actionable insights from existing physical ‘things’ in your environment.
Sense HAT
An add-on for the Raspberry Pi equipped with a gyroscope, an accelerometer, a magnetometer, a temperature sensor, a barometric pressure sensor and a humidity sensor, as well as a five-button joystick and an 8×8 RGB LED matrix — all powered by an LED driver chip and an ATtiny88 running custom firmware.
Ardhat
A HAT with an Arduino-compatible processor that responds quickly to real-time events, while letting the Raspberry Pi do all of the heavy lifting.
Wino
A cost-effective, Arduino-compatible board with built-in Wi-Fi.
pico-Platinchen
A little board designed for wearable devices that features a BNO055, an ATmega328P and a CR2032 coin-cell battery.
XeThru X2M200 and X2M300
A pair of adaptive smart sensor modules that can monitor human presence, respiration and other vital information.
LinkIt Smart 7688 Duo
An Arduino Yún-friendly platform powered by an ATmega32U4 and MediaTek MT7688 SoC.
Piccolino
A small, inexpensive controller with an embedded OLED display and Wi-Fi connectivity that you can program using existing tools like the Arduino IDE.
ZeroPi
A next-generation, Arduino and Raspberry Pi-compatible dev kit for robotic motion structure systems and 3D printers that boasts an Atmel | SMART SAM D21 at its core.
CryptoShield
A dedicated security peripheral for the Arduino and was made in collaboration with SparkFun’s previous hacker-in-residence, Josh Datko. This shield adds specialized ICs that perform various cryptographic operations which will allow you to add a hardware security layer to your Arduino project.
ZYMKEY
An add-on board that makes it easy to secure your Raspberry Pi and Linux applications.
Flip & Click
A two-sided, Arduino-like board with an AT91SAM3X8E for its heart.
ChipWhisperer-Lite
An open source toolchain for embedded hardware security research including side-channel power analysis and glitching. The board uses a Spartan 6 LX9, along with a 105 MS/s ADC, low-noise amplifier, an Atmel | SMART SAM3U chip for high-speed USB communication, MOSFETs for glitch generation and an XMEGA128 as a target device.
KeyDuino
An Arduino Leonardo-like board with built-in NFC that lets you replace your keys with any smartphone, NFC ring or proximity card.
Neutrino
An inexpensive, open source and shrunken-down version of the Arduino Zero that boasts a 32-bit ATSAMD21G18 running at 48MHz and packing 32K of RAM.
WIOT
An open source, Arduino-compatible board with an ATmega32U4, ESP8266 Wi-Fi module and lithium-ion battery support.
Obscura
An ATmega32U4-powered, 8-bit synthesizer that enables you to create NES, C64 and Amiga-style chiptune music by simply connecting a MIDI device.
Zodiac FX
An OpenFlow switch that is powerful enough to develop world-changing SDN apps yet small enough to sit on your desk. Based on an Atmel | SMART SAM4E, the unit includes four 10/100 Fast Ethernet ports with integrated magnetics and indicator LEDs along with a command line interface accessible via USB virtual serial port.
Goldilocks Analogue
A board that brings sophisticated analog and audio input, output and storage capabilities to the Arduino environment.
NodeIT
A super small and expandable IoT system for Makers.
Pixel
A smart display that features an Atmel | SMART SAM D21 MCU operating at 48MHz and packing 32K of RAM, along with a 1.5” 128×128 pixel OLED screen and a microSD slot.
SDuino
An Arduino crammed inside an SD card.
… and how could we not mention this?
The WTFDuino!
Do you feel like today’s MCUs are too simple and sensible? Well, one Maker decided to take a different approach by “undesigning” the Arduino into a banana-shaped processor whose form factor is impossible to breadboard and whose pins are incorrectly labelled.
Atmel | Bits & Pieces 