Digispark goes Pro (ATtiny167) on Kickstarter

The Atmel-based Digispark dev board has gone Pro on Kickstarter. Powered by Atmel’s ATtiny167 microcontroller (MCU), the new board is even easier to use than the original Digispark.

“[The Pro is] packed full of i/o, more program space and more features,” Digispark Pro creator Erik Kettenburg explained.

“With new shields and libraries the Digispark Pro is still just as small as a Digispark and just as affordable – because electronics should be accessible to all.”

Aside from Atmel’s ATtiny167 MCU, key project specs and features include:

• Compatible with Arduino IDE 1.5 (OSX/Win/Linux)
• Fully signed drivers and executable for easy installation
• USB programming, USB device emulation, USB-CDC virtual serial port emulation
• 
16KB Flash Memory (14.5K+ after bootloader)
• Serial over USB debugging and communication
• 14 i/o Pins (2 shared with USB)
• I2C, true SPI, UART, LIN and USI
• ADC on 10 pins
• Three PWM channels (which can be assigned to a selection of pins)
• Power via USB, or external source – 5v or 6-16v (automatic selection)
• On-board button that can be used as a reset, program, or user button – or disabled to use that pin as general i/o – without altering the bootloader
• On-board 500ma 5V regulator
• Power LED and Test/Status LED (on Pin 1)
• User accessible solder jumpers to disable LEDs
• Two mounting holes
• Breadboard compatible pin out/spacing (the three side header pins are for legacy shield support)

On the software side, the Digispark Pro uses the latest Micronucleus USB bootloader for programming, which facilitates easy programming over USB direct from the Arduino IDE (or command line). 

According to Kettenburg, the open source Micronucleus is the official bootloader of the original Digispark, with the company confirming installation of the ‘loaders on over 40,000 devices.

“With the help of friend, LittleWire creator, and Digispark user Ihsan Kehribar – the Digispark Pro supports emulating a USB CDC/Serial Device – when enabled it shows up as a serial port on all major platforms (OS X/Win/Linux/Raspi/Android) – which means it will work with the Arduino Serial Monitor, other programs designed for Arduinos that appear as a serial port and be much easier to integrate into custom programs,” he explained.

“We also provide libraries for the Pro to emulate a USB keyboard, mouse, joystick, or generic HID device. This means it can appear to your computer as if it were that type of device – allowing you to easily have your device type, move the mouse, act as a joystick and more.”

As expected, the Digispark Pro is backwards compatible with all existing Digispark shields.

Nevertheless, Kettenburg is also offering a number of Pro exclusive shields for various applications, including WiFi, Bluetooth Classic, Bluetooth Low Energy and a nRF24L01+ low cost mesh networking.

Last, but certainly not least, the Digispark Pro is ready to connect to just about any peripheral. Indeed, the dev board offers a stand-alone SPI, UART (with LIN capabilties) and I2C that is shared with a USI bus – which could act as a second SPI or UART for advanced users.

Interested in learning more about the Digispark Pro? You can check out the project’s official Kickstarter page here.

ATmega32U4 drives open source LEO ‘bot

The Creative Robotics crew has debuted LEO, an open source robotic kit powered by Atmel’s versatile ATMega32U4 microcontroller (MCU).

Additional key specs include an Arduino bootloader, 12 digital I/O pins via an I2C port expander, configurable pull up/down and interrupt capable, 6 digital I/O directly connected to the ATMega32U4 MCU, two PWM capable pins, four external interrupt capable pins, USART and I2C Serial ports, 12 analog inputs, user programmable button, as well as a ‘COMM Hood’ and ‘IO Hood’ comms expansion system.

Leo also features (dual) four wheel and tracked configurations, front and rear tactile bumpers, dual HUB-ee motor plus slave motor connections, dual wheel quadrature encoder reading (128 counts per revolution), dual motor current feedback, automatic motor disable when powered by USB, Arduino robot compatible connector/mounting holes, as well as comprehensive firmware supporting encoders, external IO, PID Speed control and a serial command set.

“LEO is the product of over a decade of design experience in building autonomous robots, experience that also inspired the creation of our HUB-ee wheels,” a Creative Robots rep explained in a recent Kickstarter post.

“Unlike most small robotic platforms on the market LEO can be reconfigured from simple symmetrical two wheel drive to four wheel drive in a matter of minutes – and [is packaged] with a pair of modular tactile bumpers at each end for basic obstacle detection.”

LEO is also quite moddable, as Makers can easily add expansion boards using a dual ‘Hood’ stacking system.

“Hoods are a bit like shields, you can use them to add functionality like extra processors, manual controls, sensors and wireless radios. We call them hoods because LEO is a vehicle (and cars have hoods) and also to differentiate them from the shield system,” said the rep.

“LEO can have two different types of hood at the same time, one for general analog and digital I/O and a second just for serial and I2C communications. This allows you to fit LEO with a Bluetooth, ZigBee or Wifi module without interfering with the general purpose I/O.”

As noted above, Leo is an open source robot project, with all the PCB schematic design files, CAD files for the bumper and caster wheel available for download under the creative commons attribution sharealike license. Software libraries will also be accessible on GitHub.

Interested in learning more? You can check out LEO’s official Kickstarter page here.

LEWE is an open source biometric wristband

LEWE – an open source biometric wristband – is built around the Atmel-powered Arduino Mega board (ATmega1280) and a number of shields, including Bluetooth, RTC and color LCD.

According to Boris Landoni of OpenElectronics, the goal of Project LEWE is to leverage available tech and create a low cost platform using sensors for data collection.

“Clearly this version is quite hulking, but we wanted to explain how to make the [platform],” said Landoni.

“[Ultimately, everything can be] integrated into a single board or two, in a more compact fashion that can be worn thanks to a special container with a wristband.”

The current iteration of the LEWE prototype currently supports at least five functions, including:

• Measuring body temperature and sweat rate
• Local display of recorded data
• Relaying information to a smartphone app
• Sending and storing data to the cloud
• Organizing data in graph form for analysis

On the app side, LEWE is designed to communicates with an Android smartphone.

“The app consists of a main activity, in which the last data received from the wristband are shown, [along with] a secondary activity that displays the diagram containing all the data,” Landoni added.

“By clicking the icon of the gear, you can enter the app settings [to] connect and configure the cloud access information.”

Interested in learning more about LEWE? You can check out additional information on OpenElectronics here.

Atmel-powered 1Sheeld (ATMega162) hits Kickstarter

Integreight’s 1Sheeld – powered by an ATmega162 MCU – is an easily configurable shield for Arduino boards. Essentially, 1Sheeld connects to a mobile Android app that allows users to take advantage of various smartphone features including the display, gyroscope, accelerometer, magnetometer, GSM, Wi-Fi and GPS.

“Our product consists of two parts. The first part is a shield that is physically connected to your Arduino board and acts as a wireless middle-man, piping data between Arduino and any Android smartphone via Bluetooth,” an Integreight rep wrote in a recent Kickstarter post.

“The second part is a software platform and app on Android smart phones that manages the communication between our shield and your smartphone and let your choose between different available shields. By doing that, you can use 1Sheeld as input or output from Arduino and make use of all of the sensors and peripherals already available on your Android smartphone.”

So what can you do with 1Sheeld? Well, according to Integreight, “the sky’s the limit.”

“You have a powerful Android smartphone that can be used to control your RC car, tweet when plants are thirsty and have fun playing with your friends. This is just a fraction of what you can actually do with 1Sheeld, [as the] possibilities are endless,” the Integreight rep explained.

“And you can hook it up with Tasker! Of course you can control your home with your phone and Arduino, like controlling heat, ventilation and air conditioning, yard watering, pet feeding and the list goes on. However, we’ve integrated a plugin to Tasker on Android, by linking Tasker to the hardware; you get a whole new experience of home automation. You can use any hardware event to trigger an action on the phone or vice-versa, you can use a phone event to trigger an action on the hardware.”

On the software side, 1Sheeld is running a custom version of the Firmata protocol which allows the microcontroller to quickly scan each pin of the Arduino and report any status change to the app.

“You can use this functionality out-of-the-box without the need for our library. There is another mode also which relies totally on the Serial peripheral of the Arduino (Pins 0,1),” said the rep. “Here our library comes in handy, we built a protocol above the Firmata protocol to send huge amount of data to a specific shield on our app, that allowed us to implement LCD, Twitter, Seven Segment – with only two pins from Arduino instead of taking a whole port.”

Aside from the embedded ATMega162, key technical specs include:

• Standard HC-06 Bluetooth adapter (Bluetooth 2.1)
• Range up to 30 feet
• 16 MHz operating frequency
• Communicates with Arduino via UART

Interested in learning more about the Atmel powered 1Sheeld? You can check out the project’s official page on Kickstarter.