UDOO Neo
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The UDOO Neo board is a successful KickStarter campaign and combines a Cortex-A9 MPU with a Cortex-M4 MCU in a single SoC.
The UDOO Neo excels at its ease of use, as it brings on-the-fly upload and run for the MCU, contrary to similar MPU+MCU configurations difficult to operate. The board illustrates two of My Four Trends for 2016 with Dual-Core the Norm and IDE as a Service. |
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Hardware
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Follow the instruction from the Get Started page. Once the micro-SD card has been prepared with the operating system, just plug the USB cable and the board powers on.
The board appears under the 192.168.7.2 address. Use any browser to connect to it. The welcome page shows a dashboard with all the active connections, some technical information, the sensors activity and shortcuts to documentation. |
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The quick configuration screen allows to name the board and connect it to the wireless network.
Just select one network on the list and enter the password. |
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The documentation covers the hardware and the software, and requires no Internet connection.
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The Arduino editor page includes a small code editor to prepare basic sketches.
This is perfect to test the blinking LED. |
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Software
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The Cortex-M4 MCU of the Udoo Neo board is supported by the Wiring / Arduino framework.
Take care: the board requires Arduino release 1.6.5 only, other releases don't work. The installation of the board goes through the now standard Board Manager and the name of the board is UDOO Neo (Cortex M4). Contrary to other implementations of MCU along MPU on a single SoC, the Cortex-M4 can be programmed and run on-the-fly. No need for rebooting or power-cycling the board! Standard GPIOs and PWMs are supported, and libraries are provided for SPI, Servo and I2C. |
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But the UDOO Neo is also a Linux board and, as such, runs the Arduino IDE natively.
Just connect using a VNC client to visualise the desktop and interact with it. The recommended VNC Viewer works great on Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. However, Mac OS X already includes the excellent Screen Sharing application.
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Dual-Core Projects
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The Freescale i.MX 6SoloX includes a 1 GHz Cortex-A9 MPU and a 227 MHz Cortex-M4 MCU on a single chip.
This brings a nice solution for a project that leverages each of the processing units.
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This is made possible thanks to the serial link between the M4 MCU and the A9 MPU. The shared serial port is Serial on the M4 MCU and /dev/ttyMCC on the A9 MPU.
I managed to install Processing on the Linux part of the board, by following the procedure for the Raspberry Pi. |
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Pins Map
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The box reveals the pins maps inside with the multiple GPIOs and SPI, I²C and Serial ports.
Inner pins (in green) are connected the the Cortex-M4 MCU with the standard Arduino-compatible layout for shields, while outer pins (in pink) are connected to the Cortex-A9 MPU. As additional ports, there's a standard plug for RTC battery, and proprietary connectors for analog camera, I²C (not Grove-compatible) and display. |
Conclusion
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I really like the out-of-the-box experience with all the software and documentation provided by the board acting as a server.
I've counted three options for the Arduino sketches. Two of them are provided by the board, one with the dashboard and another on Linux with the Arduino IDE. The last one runs on the main computer with the Arduino or any other IDE like embedXcode. Now, the editor featured by the dashboard is very basic. I'd like to enjoy a more capable IDE, like Cloud9 on the BeagleBone. The board comes in 3 flavours and is literally built-to-order. Options include: Ethernet only, Ethernet + WiFi + BLE, and Ethernet + WiFi + BLE + sensors, with prices ranging from $50 to $65. This makes the UDOO Neo highly competitive against micro-controller boards (Arduino Yun $75, Arduino Zero + WiFi 101 $55+50), as well as against micro-computer boards (Intel Edison $50 to $110, BeagleBone $55). However, the UDOO Neo brings unrivalled ease of use for the MCU. |
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Pros
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Cons
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Wrap-Up
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