Arduino introduced its MKR family of breadboard compatible maker boards with MKR1000 featuring an Atmel SAMD21 microcontroller combined with a Microchip WINC1500 WiFi module.
The board was followed by MRKZero without wireless connectivity, then MKRFOX1200 Sigfox board, and finally MKR WAN 1300 & MKR GSM 1400 boards at the end of 2017 with LoRaWAN and 3.75G cellular connectivity.
The company has now launched two new boards: Espressif ESP32 based MKR WiFi 1010 with WiFi and Bluetooth, and MKR NB 1500 equipped with an NB-IoT & LTE CAT M1 module.
Arduino MKR WiFi 1010
MKR WIFI 1010 is an evolution of the MKR1000 board, and is equipped with a U-Blox ESP32 module. Preliminary specifications:
- MCU – Microchip SAMD21 Cortex-M0+ MCU @ 48 MHz with 32KB SRAM, 256 KB flash memory
- Wireless Connectivity – 2.4 GHz 802.11 b/g/n WiFi and Bluetooth 4.2 LE via U-blox NINA-W10 Series module based on ESP32 processor.
- I/Os
- 8x digital I/Os
- 12x PWM pins
- 1x UART, 1x SPI, 1x I2C
- 7x analog input pins
- 1x analog output pin
- 8x external interrupts
- Operating voltage – 3.3V
- DC Current per I/O Pin – 7 mA
- USB – micro USB port for power and programming
- Security – ECC508 CryptoAuthentication device
- Misc – RTC, power and charge LEDs
- Power Supply
- 5V only via USB or VIN pin
- Li-Po single cell, 3.7V, 700mAh minimum
- Dimensions – 61.5 mm x 25 mm
Arduino MKR NB 1500
The second board is the first official Arduino board supporting NB-IoT and/or eMTC low power cellular IoT standards.
Preliminary specifications:
- MCU – Microchip SAMD21 Cortex-M0+ MCU @ 48 MHz with 32KB SRAM, 256 KB flash memory
- Wireless Connectivity – NB-Iot and LTE Cat M1 (eMTC) via U-blox SARA-R410M module, Nano SIM card socket
- I/Os
- 22x digital I/Os including 12x PWM pins
- 1x UART, 1x SPI, 1x I2C
- 7x analog input pins
- 1x analog output pin
- 8x external interrupts
- 1x I2S
- Operating voltage – 3.3V
- DC Current per I/O Pin – 7 mA
- USB – micro USB port for power and programming
- Misc – RTC, power and charge LEDs
- Power Supply
- 5V only via USB or VIN pin
- Li-Po single cell, 3.7V, 700mAh minimum
- Dimensions – 61.5 mm x 25 mm
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
They just throw more pasta at the wall, don’t they?
Looks like u-blox AG just dropped the price of their version of the ESP32 development board (with “Arduino headers”) from $99 to $79 (available through their own on-line shop).