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A new, more powerful alternative to the Arduino

I happened upon this new Rapid Prototyping microcontroller board on hackaday. It’s the same idea as the Arduino, but more powerful:

http://mbed.org/tour/

mbed pinout

Some features include:

  • up to 25 digital I/O pins
  • up to 6 analog inputs
  • one analog output
  • up to 6 PWM outputs
  • multiple serial interfaces
  • built-in USB
  • built-in ethernet
  • runs on 4.5V to 9V
  • based on the ARM7 microcontroller
  • 40mA drive capability on each pin, up to 400mA total
  • programmed in C++
  • all built into a bread-board ready 40 pin “DIP” package

Other neat features are the fact that the development environment is all online, so you can work on your project on any computer. The mbed shows up on the computer much like a USB thumb drive - just drag new firmware onto it and it’s uploaded automatically!

Very cool.