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 is pushing the experience to the next level with an on-board served IDE that is Arduino’s IDE. That’s the fundamental difference, ignoring the performance, which happens to be a lot higher than the Galileo 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 the middle. It assigns useful functions to the pins rather than leaving it to the devicetree world to assign. The micro stuff is assigned to the AVR where there is a huge code reference. For where you need higher performance and Linux connectivity, the pins are there and already 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! Linux side.
How does the Linux side—Arduino side work. Is the integration similar to the Yún?
Very, very similar! The Bridge API will be fully reusable. You can come at it in the ways you are familiar. If you know Linux, you’ll be able to come in that way. If you know Arduino, you’ll be able to use the AVR as the system master.
If so… the Yún 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 focused on supporting advancement of Linux and other open source on open hardware. The Foundation doesn’t have any royalties for this arrangement and isn’t playing that active of a role, but will be involved in advancement of source for this platform and other BeagleBoard.org platforms. CircuitCo, a member of the Foundation, has a lead role in the design and production of the TRE and other open platforms.
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