Arduino TRE

[juani_c 66]

So, now Texas is making* an Arduino;

http://e2e.ti.com/blogs_/b/toolsinsider/archive/2013/10/03/introducing-arduino-tre.aspx?DCMP=dsp-arm-arduinotre-131003&HQS=dsp-arm-arduinotre-b-e2e'>Most powerful Arduino available to date, powered by Texas Instruments Sitara

[jpnorair 340]

So, it's a competitor to Beagle and RasPi. I'm not sure what good a wiring sketch is going to be on this, but I guess we will see.

[Automate 69]

Apparently Arduino worked closely with http://beagleboard.org/  BeagleBoard even has a link to it on their home page.

[spirilis 1,265]

Somewhere I read it's similar to the Yun -- ATMega32U4 onboard, with the Sitara as a Linux side-board.  (or maybe you think of it as a Sitara with an ATMega32U4 alamode).

[jpnorair 340]

Has the Due been at all successful? I've never heard of anyone using one. I'm guessing that the Arduino crowd (and the Energia crowd) aren't really looking to solve big, difficult problems. The Due then becomes needlessly complex. People like BB and RasPi because they are basically just little linux SBCs. With the Tre, I wonder why the AVR part of the board is even necessary.

 

The only thing I really like about the Tre is that the larger PCB provides a better ground plane for monopole antennas, although that's not really an impressive feature since I could cheaply use a dipole on a smaller board.

[spirilis 1,265]

As someone who came from arduino land, the Due was too little too late.

 

Sent from my Galaxy Note II with Tapatalk 4

 

 

[yyrkoon 250]

I for one am not convinced this is going to be worth bothering with. Also I am a bit befuddled as to why TI would make a board that uses the competitions hardware. Perhaps a similar board with a TIVA or Hercules dev board would have been a better choice ? Using Energia of course. After all they do have a time investment to consider. . . Passed this, what is the cost going to be ? I expect the cost will be around $100, which IMHO is far too much. We'll see.

[cde 334]

Has the Due been at all successful? I've never heard of anyone using one. I'm guessing that the Arduino crowd (and the Energia crowd) aren't really looking to solve big, difficult problems. The Due then becomes needlessly complex. People like BB and RasPi because they are basically just little linux SBCs. With the Tre, I wonder why the AVR part of the board is even necessary.

 

The only thing I really like about the Tre is that the larger PCB provides a better ground plane for monopole antennas, although that's not really an impressive feature since I could cheaply use a dipole on a smaller board.

The AVR is there for backwards compatibility. No need to port code over to linux if you have an arduino on board. Also no need to get a separate microcontroller, needlessly stacking it on top. Frankly most that can be done with the avr is redundant compared to the multi-threaded linux sbc, but its for connivence 

[cde 334]

I for one am not convinced this is going to be worth bothering with. Also I am a bit befuddled as to why TI would make a board that uses the competitions hardware. Perhaps a similar board with a TIVA or Hercules dev board would have been a better choice ? Using Energia of course. After all they do have a time investment to consider. . . Passed this, what is the cost going to be ? I expect the cost will be around $100, which IMHO is far too much. We'll see.

TI is just announcing that Arduino choose their sbc. TI doesn't produce the entire board. In fact:

 

In addition, the Arduino TRE is partially the result of a close collaboration between Arduino and the BeagleBoard.org foundation. These open hardware pioneers share a passion for expanding open source development and making technology accessible for artists, designers and hobbyists. The TRE design builds upon the experience of both Arduino and BeagleBoard.org, combining the benefits of both community based boards.

 

It's the beagleboard people who don't make sense. You just helped produce your own competition... 

[yyrkoon 250]

Looks like you're right, but this board still does not make any sense to me. You hit on the main reason why a couple posts up responding to JP. 

 

If I want an external chip talking to a Sitara AM335x( Beaglebone Black ), I'll use UART, or perhaps even SPI.  However, I have spent the last several months getting to know the BBB very well. Someone else may not want to take the time. *shrug* 

[Automate 69]

Looks like you're right, but this board still does not make any sense to me.

I think it comes down to price.  If the board is $100, I agree it does not make sense.  But in reality adding a AVR chip to a board should only add a few bucks to the cost to produce the board.

 

The nice thing about BBB and RPi is the Ethernet.  Add an Ethernet shield to an Arduino and you are already above the cost of a BBB /.RPi and still have to deal with an MCU with limited memory, storage and speed.

 

I see the TRE used in situations where you need Ethernet but also have a shield and/or sketch you want to re-use.

 

PS:  I would rather see a board like this but with a Boosterpack socket.

[spirilis 1,265]

The way I see it, BeagleBoard.org is a thin veil over TI.  Both Jason and the other guy (too lazy to look up his name) are TI employees.  I read somewhere (announcement or someone's blog post, not sure which) that the board is made in the USA.  Betcha it's CircuitCo, same guys who make the beaglebone/beagleboards and being right up the street, employ folks who are probably ex-TI or very close to TI.  Everyone wins all around, in other words.

[Automate 69]

The Arduino Galileo using an Intel CPU was also announced yesterday.  Here is a post from a pre-release tester about its features http://makezine.com/2013/10/03/10-great-intel-galileo-features/

 

I would think the TRE would have most of the same advantages.

[yyrkoon 250]

@@Automate Well price is still up for debate by the guys at arduino.cc from what I understand ( post on the beagleboard google groups by Jason Kridner ), so we'll have to see. The thing that has me thinking this will be ~$100 is that the Arduino platform stuff by its self seems to hover around $45. Otherwise the TRE, seems to be pretty close to the BBB minus a lot of GPIO, and with no onboard eMMC. So . . . yeah I am fairly confident this will be at least more than $60.

 

@@spirilis My understanding that Jason Kridner is the only TI employee. He is the one, or at minimum one of the people who works on bonescript, and has made a github repo on all the PRU software and information ( stuff ). Gerald, Koen, and the rest ( sorry guys I can keep track of you all ) all work for circuitco. But a few are ex TI employees.

 

@@Automate I too thought the Galileo was an interesting board. I am not an Arduino fan by any stretch of the imagination, but that I am thinking could be stripped out, or just not used if not wanted. 256M Ram IMHO is really not enough, but could be made to work. Again, here price will matter a good bit. The idea of hopefully running a "normal" distro ( x86- stripped down of course) will appeal to many people.

[spirilis 1,265]

I think oPossum pointed out on IRC yesterday that the Galileo connects to the arduino headers using an I2C port expander type of chip.  Very slow update times... not going to bitbang very much with that one.

 

edit: Confirmed via FAQ - http://www.intel.com/support/galileo/faq.htm

The GPIO output pins on Intel