Intel Curie-based board is aimed at developing wearable technology
21-01-2016 | By Paul Whytock
A versatile Intel development board that is easy to use as an educational tool but is also capable of prototyping sophisticated products with connect and compute functions is available from Mouser Electronics.
Called the Genuino 101, there are a lot of specification details that make this board particularly interesting but before looking at those let's deal with one of its major operational advantages. The Genuino 101 is the first widely available development board based on the Intel Curie module.
Intel launched this module at the Consumer Electronics Show and it's a tiny hardware product based on the company’s first purpose-built Quark SoC for wearable devices.
Intel says this Quark SoC is the ideal chip for ‘always-on’ applications such as social notifications and sports activities and is particularly suited to the development of wearable electronic products. Not surprisingly it's extremely power efficient.
The module contains two tiny cores, an x86 (Quark) and a 32-bit ARC architecture core, both clocked at 32MHz.
Along with its 32bit SoC, 384Kilobytes of flash memory and 80Kilobytes of SDRAM, the Curie Module also provides a low-power integrated DSP sensor hub, a Bluetooth Low Energy chip, a 6-axis sensor and battery charging circuitry.
On the software side of things Intel has created a specific platform for the module designed to help developers. It includes firmware, software and a development kit. The platform will support Apple's iOS and also Android devices and the Real-Time Operating Systems and framework developed by Intel is scheduled to be open sourced in March 2016.
In addition to those features the 101 comes with 14 digital input/output pins, of which 4 can be used as PWM outputs, 6 analog inputs, a USB connector for serial communication and sketch upload, a power jack, an in-system programming header with SPI signals and I2C dedicated pins.
The board operating voltage and I/O is 3.3Volts and all pins are protected against 5Volt over voltage. This means that the output signals will be in the range 0 to 3.3V but you can apply up to 5V on a pin without damaging the board. Going higher than 5V on any pin will of course damage the board.
For more technical information take a look at this website: http://eu.mouser.com/new/Intel/genuino101/
