Wido — WiFi with Arduino Leonardo
After the successful BLuno board based on Bluetooth Low Energy, DFrobot launches a new board with WiFi.
The Wido board sports the same form-factor as the original Arduino Leonardo, except it includes a WiFi module, the CC3000 SoC from Texas Instruments and a microSD-card slot. Compared with Bluetooth, WiFi is available in all tablets and easier to implement. There's no specific hardware and software requirements as for Bluetooth Low Energy. |
Hardware
Both the WiFi radio and the SD card use the SPI bus and require only 4 pins, apart form the pins on the ICSP connector.
The WIFI Module requires 6 pins
The microSD only requires one additional pin
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Map from DFRrobot — Click to enlarge
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Software
As fully compatible with the Arduino Leonardo board, the board uses the original Arduino IDE, on Windows, Mac OS X or Linux. Sketches can be uploaded by USB cable. However, I didn't manage to upload them wirelessly through WiFi.
The WiFi connection is managed by the dedicated CC3000_Library adapted from Adafruit and enriched with examples for the Wido. Just download and install it as a standard Arduino library. DFRobot provides a step-by-step tutorial with many examples. The basic example takes half of the Flash memory and one third of the RAM memory of the ATmega32u4. More elaborate examples include connection to the local server and to Xively. Thanks to its compatibility with the Arduino IDE, Wido is fully supported by embedXcode, the template for embedded computing on Xcode. |
An Affordable Introduction to the Web of Things
DFRobot has done a great job on making WiFi easy to use. Thank to the standard and well-known ATmega32u4, the user has only to focus on the WiFi module and protocol.
The step-by-step tutorial provides more elaborate examples, like connecting to the local server or connecting to Xively. The board is sold USD30, a highly competitive price when compared with the competition: an official Arduino package stands at USD110 (standard Leonardo board at USD25 and official Arduino WiFi shield at USD85), an adapted Arduino with Adafruit package goes for USD65 (standard Uno board at USD25 and Adafruit WiFi shield at USD40). The only serious competitor is the LaunchPad WiFi CC3200 also priced at USD30 but based on a Cortex-M4. The Wido provides an affordable introduction to the Web of Things, here based on WiFi connectivity. Actually, the WiFi is easier to implement than Bluetooth Low Energy. |
Pros
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Cons
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Wrap-Up
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Links
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