Arduino Roadmap

(Written by David Cuartielles and Massimo Banzi. Updated on the 19.06.2005)

2005

April

150 Arduino Serial Boards produced for beta-testing
150 Arduino USB Boards produced for beta-testing
Software patch for the Wiring IDE produced

May

Workshop at K3 - Malmo University
Workshop at IDII
Prototype Electric Dance Machine shown at Goteborg's Science Fair (Sweden) running on Arduino
Prototype for Motor Shield produced
We reach 60 hand-picked beta-testers at 35 different institutions from: Canada, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, and USA

June

Some projects presented at the 2005 End of Year show of IDII feature Arduino boards.
The 13 of June in London, UK the "Touch Me" exhibiton opens: The latest version of Sonic Texting is now running on Arduino USB while Tune-Me is build around two interactive MP3 players derived from the Arduino architecture.
Official presentation at Vinnova, the Innovation Foundation in Sweden
Standalone Arduino IDE - preAlpha
Serial Proxy patch produced for MAC and Windows

July

Official presentations for 4 different Indian Universities in Interaction Design

August

September

K3 (Sweden) opens the ID3 course Senses and Sensors based on Arduino with 40 students

October

K3 (Sweden) opens the IDF course Collections and Reinterpretations based on Arduino with 45 students
Madrid Medialab (Spain) hosts a basic Arduino workshop for artists link [ http://www.medialabmadrid.org/medialab/medialab.php?l=0&a=a&i=268 ]

Development

Software

By the end of june we will release an alpha version of an ide for arduino. As usual all the sources will be in CVS for you to play with. Next step is adding support for multiple boards. We are working on adding a menu that will list all the directories in the "platforms" directory... each directory will contain a configuration file that tells Arduino IDE:

the name of the board (arduino or BX24 or "bob's pic micocontroller board")
the name of a java class that is able to turn the .arduino file into c and compile it
the name of a java class that is able to download the .hex file to the board
the location of the help files
other configuration info

Essentially if somebody wants to add a PIC board to the system they just have to create a plugin using that structure and we have arduino working on pic

This means that instantsoup is not bound to arduino/wiring but can be adapted to what the individual school is using.

The first boards to be included will be:

BX24 - Since it's based on atmel AVR like arduino by replcing the current firmware with a bootloader we can use a BX24 module to run arduino code. pretty cool for institutions that have a big investments in BX24 chips.
Atmel Butterfly [ http://www.atmel.com/dyn/products/tools_card.asp?tool_id=3146 ] - pretty nifty board with a bunch of sensors and LCD screen for about EUR 20.

(NB: I have done a quick test with SDCC and Picant C and it should be a matter of a couple days work each to add PIC and 8051 support. It should also be as quick to support 68HC11 and the Philips LPC ARM processors. If somebody wants to volunteer write us. 19.06.2005 Massimo Banzi )

Hardware

I/O Boards

We currently have two boards ready and useable

Serial - using classic RS232 signals
USB - for computers without serial ports (almost every modern laptop) this has been tested with Windows , Mac OS and Linux.

We also have more boards in preparation

Bluetooth - we have an alpha version that replaces Serial or Usb with Bluetooth wireless connection. Wireless instant soup is a reality
Ethernet - We are now preparing a board where USB is replaced with an ethernet connection. This will also include a small basic firmware that replicates the functionality of the xmlproxy inside the board. This will enable instantsoup to happen without xmlproxy running on the PC. This board will be very useful also in home/building automation where every arduino ethernet will be a node that flash can talk to across the building!