While the idea of having an entire MCU platform in a DIP format isn’t all that new, Alex Gornostayev just wasn’t satisfied with some of those on the market today, like the Teensy and Arduino Nano. And so, the Maker decided to create his own Arduino-compatible board that crams many useful interfaces all into one easy-to-use DIP32 package.
The aptly named DIPDuino goes a step further than most of today’s breakout boards. Based an ATmega1284RFR2 along with a 2.4GHz ZigBee transceiver, the unit is equipped with a 128×32-pixel OLED display, a microSD card reader, a serial FTDI port, 1MB of SRAM, a full JTAG debugger port, USB and pin power supply, LEDs, and a stabilized 3V and 3.6V power output.
Looking ahead, Gornostayev is planning on using the board for a number of DIY projects, ranging from an OLED watch to a weather station and a home automation system. Aside from that, one of his friends even wants to build a DIPDuino-based RepRap controller. The possibilities are endless! However, first he would like to improve its software so that the firmware can be programmed and updated from an SD card.
“I want to be able to be able to program DIPDuino from SD card. Just save BIN file on SD card and boot the device. The bootloader must be able to flash the firmware and it does not look too complicated. (I call this project ‘DIPBoot’).”
“I want to implement a simple BASIC translator for DIPDuino to be able to write programs in BASIC using simple text editor, save it on SD card and execute it form file on DIPDuino (which will be DIPBasic in this case),” Gornostayev adds. “This is really cool, because I will be to write programs on any devices, including smartphones or even DIPDuino itself, and execute them without any compilers and connections.”
Intrigued? Read more about the project on its Hackaday.io page here.
- Atmel Staff -