With information about the new Arduino Tre board scare on the ground right now, I managed to track down Jason Kridner from the BeagleBoard Foundation to talk about the new board.
We know very little about the Tre, the Galileo is getting far more coverage. So tell use about the new Arduino Tre?
Arduino TRE is an actual Arduino board, not just a compatible. It isย pushing the experience to the next level with an on-board served IDEย that is Arduino’s IDE. That’s the fundamental difference, ignoring theย performance, which happens to be a lot higher than the Galileoย platform.
It looks to BeagleBone split in half with an Arduino dropped in the middle?
The focus is on simplicity. It isn’t just a BeagleBone split in theย middle. It assigns useful functions to the pins rather than leaving itย to the devicetree world to assign. The micro stuff is assigned to theย AVR where there is a huge code reference. For where you need higherย performance and Linux connectivity, the pins are there and alreadyย setup for quick use.
Is that an XBee socket in the middle of the board? Is the XBee connected to the Linux or the Arduino side?
Absolutely! ย Linux side.
How does the Linux sideโArduino side work. Is the integration similar to the Yรบn?
Very, very similar! The Bridge API will be fully reusable. You canย come at it in the ways you are familiar. If you know Linux, you’ll beย able to come in that way. If you know Arduino, you’ll be able to useย the AVR as the system master.
If soโฆ the Yรบn came with the new Arduino Bridge library, does the Tre?
Yup.
How was TI and the BeagleBoard Foundation involved with the Tre’s development?
TI continues to donate Gerald’s and my time. The foundation is focusedย on supporting advancement of Linux and other open source on openย hardware. The Foundation doesn’t have any royalties for thisย arrangement and isn’t playing that active of a role, but will beย involved in advancement of source for this platform and otherย BeagleBoard.org platforms. CircuitCo, a member of the Foundation, hasย a lead role in the design and production of the TRE and other openย platforms.
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