As useful as the venerable Uno can be for many projects, when makers need more IO, more power, more…everything, they typically find themselves reaching for the beefier, connector-laden Arduino Mega. At least they might have…until the announcement of the new GIGA R1 WiFi, the most powerful Arduino board for makers.
Built on the Mega’s familiar form factor, the GIGA dwarfs the power of its cousin with a dual-core Cortex®-M7 + Cortex®-M4 microcontroller, which allows two Arduino sketches to run concurrently on a single board – or one traditional sketch, plus a MicroPython script.
Despite the common layout, the GIGA increases the Mega’s pin count to a mind-blowing 76, including 12 analog, 13 PWM, 4 serial ports, 3 I2C, 2 SPI, 1 FDCAN, and 1 SAI. This, plus USB-C, USB-A (host), and a 3.5mm audio jack makes the GIGA a veritable playground for music projects, HID (human interface device), machine learning/vision, robotics, and more.
We were lucky enough to receive a GIGA to play with before release, so look out for hands-on reactions and full reviews soon. In the meantime, you can pick up the Arduino GIGA R1 WiFi directly from Arduino, as well as view the datasheet for complete details on this incredible new board.
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