Saturday, September 28, 2013

Miniaturized Arduinos

Arduino has become very popular among electronic hobbyist and inventors. And because of it's popularity, a lot of people including me are really waiting for a miniaturized version. I had been searching for this version on the internet and to my surprised, I found 3 interesting flavors, 2 of these are already available in the market and 1 is still in development stage.

These 3 flavors of miniaturized arduinos I am talking about are the following:
1. Microduino
2. Femtoduino
3. One Square Inch of Goodness

Based on my initial assessments and studies, Femtoduino leads the pack because it has a built-in ftdi module which means all I need to upload my sketch is a data cable. But its main drawback is the 0.05" pitch which is not compatible with almost all electronic widgets compatible with the existing arduino. Microduino and One Square Inch of Goodness both uses the 0.1" pitch btw.

In terms of available shields, Microduino is the leader this is because the group responsible for its development is well funded and they have a lot of hands to do major research. The sad thing is, Microduino is still not for sale as of this writing. What I am really looking forward to is the miniaturized version of the arduino mega which they call Microduino Core+.

Femtoduino:
Microduino:
One Square Inch of Goodness: