It looks like an Arduino,
programs like an Arduino, and even
runs the standard Arduino programs.
The port isn’t complete at this
moment, but by the time you read
this, it may well be. This is an
Arduino on steroids. The UNO32 has
128K Flash and 16K of RAM. You
can do a lot with that!
Rumor has it that the Arduino
developer crew is going to accept
most of the MPIDE expansions into
the next official Arduino IDE release.
Mark and Rick believe this will open
the door for others to port different
hardware to the Arduino stable more
easily. Digilent has even stayed within
the fully open source Arduino
mindset and has made the ChipKit
UNO32 board designs and
bootloader fully available for anyone
else to create their own UNO32
designs. So, if you ever wished that
your Arduino could be faster, your
wish has been granted.
Running the typical demo
programs from Arduino (ones not
optimized to the AVR ATmega parts)
will look the same as they do on a
16 MHz ATmega Arduino; they’ll just
run about 6-7 times faster (by my ad
hoc timing experiments). I’ve even
gotten the SparkFun color LCD shield
and NKC color LCD shield programs
to run.
There are a few things to look
out for, and they all have to do with
code written and optimized on the
ATmega parts. If you translate them
to C32 (Microchip’s C compiler)
format, they’ll work on the UNO32
series of boards. (If there is interest in
this, I can do a more in-depth article
on the UNO32 boards in the future.)
Figure 5 and Figure 6 are shots of
the UNO32 and its basic I/O shield
from Digilent. The basic I/O shield
has the following stuff on it:
Figure 5. ChipKit UNO32 80 MHz Arduino board.
The four FET drivers are “low
side” 20V, 3A drivers useful for
controlling relays or single direction
motors (a stepper, for instance). The
OLED display is pretty cool too. The
Arduino hackers are porting sketches
to control these pieces; these scripts
should be available soon.
Well, that’s it for another Mr.
Roboto this month. Keep on
building robots, and if you have any
questions about new ways to do,
old ways to do things, or new
things in general, drop me an email.
I can be reached at
roboto@servomagazine.com. SV
Figure 6. UNO32 basic I/O shield.
• 128x32 pixel OLED graphic display.
• I2C temperature sensor.
• 256 Kbit I2C EEPROM.
• I2C daisychain connector.
• Four pushbuttons.
• Four slide switches.
• Eight discrete LEDs.
• Four open drain FET drivers.
• Analog potentiometer.
SERVO 11.2011 17