New Arduinos announced

Ron Czapala

This weekend at the Maker Faire in NYC, a new line of Arduinos will be announced - the Arduino Mega 2560 and Arduino UNO.

Can't find any details yet but they have replaced the FTDI USB chip with a "custom made usb-serial converter built with an Atmel ATmega8U2".

Ravenkallen

Man, Parallax better hurry with the Prop 2, to keep up with all of these Arduinos popping up, haha....Seriously though the Arduino 2560 looks cool. It is based on the ATMEGA 2560 which has 256 Kilobytes of memory, i believe....Sweet!!

Leon

It's an expensive chip, and they are impossible to buy in quantity like many Atmel devices.

LoopyByteloose

Parallax doesn't have to have a Prop2, but Arduino has been very popular because of how it supports USB interface. I suspect a Prop board with Master as well as Slave USB would help Parallax a bit.

Actually, Parallax is historically very strong in USB. The FTBI chips are some of the best USB support available. I suppose adding some RAM and ADC integration in the form of IC sockets to a board might really dry up a lot of hype.

Ravenkallen

@Leon...Yeah, the chip(JUST BY ITSELF) is 20 bucks!!!

Unknown

I look at them and wonder if they are 100% compatible and almost everyone promoting them that I checked out are quiet about it.

Martin Hodge

Looking at the schematic, the only thing they've done of significance is to switch from the FT232 to the ATMEGA8U2 for USB connectivity. This allows them to use their new USB vendor ID and program their own interface instead of relying on Future Tech. The chips cost about the same. They still use the atmega328 as the main controller, so I see no reason it would not be compatible. The $20 chip mentioned above is for the new Arduino MEGA, not the Uno. The switch to the ATMEGA8U2 required a 2nd ICSP header and a 2ND crystal.

schill

I believe you can add a specific VID and PID with FTDI chips but you need to add an external eeprom where they are stored (thus adding another chip to the board).

They say the new interface will allow them to have devices identify themselves as keyboard, mice, joysticks, etc. I think that's where the real benefit is. The distinct VID and PID mostly means they paid the "USB people" for official numbers.

As far as FTDI chips go, I have always been happy with them and have found they are the most stable USB to serial interface I've worked with.

Unknown

"At this point, the Mega 2560 has some kind of issue with gcc on certain platforms and unable to use the full memory available until there is an update to the IDE."-Hack a Day

It appears they still have some fixes to work out.

electrosys

I better like the FT232, not only they are more stable USB to serial interface, but also they can be use for bitbanging and for programming many Atmel chips, and burning the bootloader to Arduino chip without external AVR-writer, you need only the FT232 chip and a modify Avrdud (look at the link above)

schill

I've seen a few posts around the net wondering about the new Arduino VID and PID numbers and whether people will be able to make their own Unos commercially. Apparently the wording of the agreement with the USB people implies that VID and PID cannot be used by anyone except the company registering for them. So, if you build a clone Uno it could not use the VID and PID and would not show up on your computer as an Arduino. This has not been an issue in the past.

I have not looked into this directly but it's one more interesting possibility.

Franklin

Out of the box the Arduino shows up as a serial port as did the old one. Unless you want to create your own you should have no problem and if you do want to make your own you should know enough to program the 8u2.