Some of the well-liked microcontroller boards round, the Arduino Uno launched all the way in which again in 2010 and the Uno R3 (revision 3) has been the usual for greater than ten years. So it was large information yesterday when, as a part of its Arduino Day reside stream (opens in new tab), the corporate introduced the upcoming Arduino Uno R4 board, which is able to supply enormous leaps ahead in processing energy, RAM, storage and connectivity.
Due out in Could for an as-yet-undisclosed value, the Arduino Uno R4 might be out there in each “Minima” (common) and Wi-Fi variations. The wi-fi model can have an Espressif S3 module that helps each Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity.
The Uno R4 will preserve the identical pinout and structure as its predecessor however step as much as a 32-bit, Renesas RA4M1 CPU operating at 48 MHz. That is an enormous improve from the 8-bit, 16-MHz ATmega328P processor in prior Unos. The brand new chip relies on the Arm Cortex M4 structure versus the AVR RISC-based platform on the prior processor. Arduino says that the majority present software program libraries ought to work with no modification however a couple of that have been optimized for AVR would possibly should be tweaked.
The Uno R4 can have 32K of SRAM, which is 16x greater than the 2K on the Uno R3. It’s going to even have 256K of onboard NAND versus 32K on the R3. There is a USB-C port for connecting a PC in lieu of the clunky USB Kind-B port on older fashions. The barrel energy connector stays in place however can now deal with as much as 24V as an alternative of 20V. A 12-bit analog DAC, a CAN bus and an SPI port are additionally on board.
| Header Cell – Column 0 | Uno R4 | Uno R3 |
|---|---|---|
| CPU | Renesas RA4M1 (48 MHz, Arm Cortex M4) | ATmega328P (16 MHz, AVR) |
| SRAM | 32K | 2K |
| Flash Storage | 256K | 32K |
| USB | Kind-C | Kind-B |
| Max Voltage | 24V | 20V |
Within the official photograph (proven on the prime of this text) of the Uno R4, Arduino has put yellow and inexperienced bins over elements of the PCB. In its broadcast, the corporate stated that it’s sustaining a component of shock and never revealing what’s underneath the bins till nearer to the launch.
If you wish to be among the many first to purchase an Uno R4, you’ll be able to join the ready record (opens in new tab) which is able to warn you when the board is on the market. There’s additionally an early adopter program (opens in new tab) for builders who’ve written well-liked libraries. In case you are accepted into this system, the corporate will ship you a free Uno R4.
Whereas we do not know what the Uno R4 will value, it appears protected to imagine that the Minima model will go for $25 or extra as that is what the Uno R3 prices in the present day. The Uno R4 WiFi will clearly be pricier.
The brand new Uno R4 needs to be a boon for makers who builds robots or iOT gadgets with Arduino at the moment. It will likely be appropriate with an enormous ecosystem of shields and different equipment whereas offering significantly better efficiency.
Nevertheless, the Uno R4 faces very stiff competitors from boards primarily based on Raspberry Pi’s RP2040 chip. The RP2040 operates at a beneficiant 133 MHz (about 3x the Uno R4) with twin cores and 256K of SRAM. There are quite a few boards with the RP2040 however the first-party Raspberry Pi Pico goes for simply $4 for the essential mannequin or $6 with Wi-Fi / Bluetooth.
Alternatively, the Uno R4 can deal with much more energy than an RP2040 board as its energy connector helps as much as 24V as an alternative of a mere 5V on Raspberry Pi’s platform. We’ve an in depth comparability of the prior gen Arduino versus Raspberry Pi Pico, which we’ll replace as quickly as we get our palms on the R4.