Overview
The Arduino has enjoyed succes that is perhaps as great as that of the Basic STAMP. My only observation as to why this is, comes down to a free toolchain and a free design which allows many people to create competetive but unique products in the same group.
Originally built with the Atmel ATMega 168 this board now comes standard with the Atmel ATMega 328 which has 32K bytes of flash memory and 2K bytes of RAM. Compared to the old Motorola 68HC11 used on the Miniboard which only had 2K of EEPROM and 256 bytes of RAM its pretty spacious.
Another property of these systems that has added to their popularity is the “shield” system. These are additional cards that can be plugged into the I/O pins along the edge of the board. In this way the general purpose board can be specialized to a particular task, like motor control, or sensors or even playing Christmas Carols.
Tech Specs
Specs for this controller (with an Atmega 328 installed):
| Manufacturer : | Atmel |
|---|---|
| ISA : | 8 bit AVR |
| Analog I/O : |
6 ch 10 bits 15 ksps |
| Clock Frequency : |
16Mhz |
| Digital I/O : |
14 in 14 out |
| Memory : |
2K RAM 1K EEPROM 32K Flash |
| Serial I/O : |
1 UART 1 SPI 1 I2C |
| Timer I/O : |
1 PWM 1 IC 2 OC |
|
Note: some pins may be multiplexed, consult the chip datasheet for specific pin counts and usage. |
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