Today at World Maker Faire New York, Massimo Banzi took stage to unveil two new Arduino boards, the long-range radio (LoRa)-equipped MKR WAN 1300 and the cellular-capable MKR GSM 1400.
The boards come in with the smaller MKR form factor that Arduino has been utilizing of late, measuring 67.64 x 25mm. The company says they also offer low power consumption, making them useful for applications such as environmental monitoring, tracking, agriculture, energy monitoring and home automation.
Both boards use the Atmel SAM D21 microcontroller, featuring a 32-bit ARM Cortex-M0+ processor, 256KB Flash memory and 32KB SRAM.The MKR GSM 1400 provides global 2G and 3G connectivity via an integrated u-blox module. The MKR WAN 1300 features a Murata LoRa module and can be powered by AA or AAA batteries or an external 5V USB, and can switch between power sources.
They’re both available for pre-order now.
In addition to the release of the new boards, Banzi stressed Arduino’s renewed commitment to open source, and their dedication to the community, especially to developers and educators.
A new update will help you keep sensitive information in your code secure even after you upload and share it. Using “SECRET_” before a value will automatically blank it out when you share the code, so you can keep API keys and tokens to yourself.
Schools, educators, and other Chromebook users will be excited to learn that Arduino is developing an Arduino Create Chromebook App, which is still in beta, as well as a Classroom Kit, complete with online training materials, remote support, and a network of Arduino partners.
Banzi also announced that starting on October 10, they will be hosting a monthly “hangout” with the dev community, in an effort to better engage with makers and with the Arduino User Group (AUG). Next year, in February 2018, Banzi and other stakeholders will meet to discuss the Arduino Foundation and how to best move forward with it. The Arduino Foundation was announced a year ago at Maker Faire New York 2016.
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