Let’s take a look at these open source development boards, which can give birth to prototypes and finished products in various fields including smart toys, gaming peripherals, home and industrial automation, consumer medical devices, printers, smart vending machines, educational terminals, and more.
1. UDOO
UDOO, like Raspberry Pi, is an ARM architecture Linux board, and it also has a second ARM processor on the circuit board to simulate Arduino Due. UDOO has both dual-core and quad-core versions of the ARM Cortex-A9 CPU, and uses the same ARM SAM3X processor as Arduino Due. UDOO also features a built-in OpenGL accelerator, 54 digital I/O and analog inputs (with pinout compatible with Arduino R3), Ethernet, built-in WiFi, HDMI, USB, SATA, and analog audio signals. However, such powerful configurations make this board lack any outstanding features. Additionally, the quad-core version’s price exceeds $129, making it difficult to find a reasonable market position.
2. Arduino Yún
Arduino Yún is based on Arduino Leonardo (ATmega32U4) and includes an independent embedded AR9331 processor, making it a microcontroller with WiFi functionality, and the first WiFi member in the Arduino family. We can connect via WiFi for remote design programming or operate through a regular USB connection. Additionally, Arduino has collaborated with Temboo to access data from Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, FedEx, PayPal, and many other websites through a One-Stop API.
3. BeagleBone Black
BeagleBone Black is one of the few development boards that can boot Linux in 10 seconds, measuring 8.6cm × 5.3cm, which is the size of a credit card. BeagleBone Black uses a 1GHz ARM Cortex-A8 processor from Texas Instruments, along with 2GB of eMMC storage, 512MB of DDR3 memory, and a microSD card slot for expandable storage. The board has 46-pin slots on both sides, supporting LCD interfaces, UART interfaces, eMMC interfaces, ADC interfaces, IIC interfaces, SPI interfaces, PWM interfaces, etc., making it easy to connect various external devices. It also comes with 1 micro HDMI, 1 USB OTG, and 1 USB Host interface.
4. pcDuino
pcDuino can run complete PC operating systems like Ubuntu and Android ICS, and is easy to use with toolchains, compatible with the Arduino open ecosystem, including Arduino shields and open source projects. Notably, it is compatible with most Arduino expansion boards, and all Arduino expansion pins can be accessed via APIs, including UART, ADC, PWM, GPIO, and I2C. Like Arduino, we can write programs directly on pcDuino and run them, and we can also directly use some functional modules provided by SparkFun for functional expansion without drivers.
6. DigiX
DigiX is a development board compatible with Arduino Due, with low-power WiFi (b/g/n) and an nRF24L01 architecture mesh network, boasting up to 99 I/O pins. Additionally, DigiX has a real-time clock and 4× UARTs, 2× I2C, SPI, CAN Bus, 2× DAC, JTAG, and DMA. DigiX seems to try to meet everyone’s needs while also being shipped with a voltage level-shifting expansion board. Currently, DigiX’s retail price is $59, which is very attractive.
7. Uruk
Uruk shares some commonalities with Arduino Yún; if you disregard its built-in Arduino-compatible MCU (Atmega32u4), it resembles a familiar wireless router. As a WiFi module connected to Arduino, Uruk also has a built-in firewall, effectively enhancing network connection security. The design concept of Uruk is quite interesting, allowing operations to be set directly through a web browser, although its fundraising on Kickstarter has not been very smooth, with only a week left. Currently, this development board is priced at $39, and if you only need it as an expansion module for Arduino, there is also a $29 version available.
8. SparkCore
SparkCore is a platform with supporting cloud services that is compatible with Arduino and has built-in WiFi functionality. Like Yún, SparkCore can connect via WiFi for programming. Besides the local area network, SparkCore can also access and update its progress anywhere through cloud services. Currently, SparkCore is priced at $39, and with its provided features and services, it has a good prospect.
9. Goldilocks
Goldilocks is a very interesting and uniquely designed development board. As a replica of Arduino, it neither uses Uno’s ATmega328p nor Mega’s ATmega2560, but employs the ATmega1284p microcontroller. Goldilocks has specifications similar to Uno, but its SRAM is eight times larger than the latter. If you have ever pushed the SRAM limits on Arduino Uno, you might find some joy in this board, although at $45, it is not cheap compared to existing Arduino development boards.
10. ExtraCore
ExtraCore is a very small (22mm × 25.4mm, weighing only 1.7g) development board that is compatible with Arduino, featuring 22 I/O pins. We can foresee that most people choosing ExtraCore for development will target its specifications and low cost. ExtraCore is priced at only $15, which, while not enough to consider it a disposable item, is a good choice for designing one-time prototypes.
DigiSpark is also a development board based on the ATTiny85 architecture and is small enough to support Arduino IDE 1.0+ (OSX/Win/Linux). Although DigiSpark has only 6 I/O pins, it can extend its possibilities with various expansion tools. DigiSpark is priced at only $12, making it a good choice for learning development or functional expansion.
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