Sony does Arduino: meet Spritzer
Not long after the announcement by Intel that they would be withdrawing many of their embedded products, Sony have decided to enter the fray and will be showcasing an Arduino-compatible development board at the Tokyo Maker Faire. The board specification promises a multi-core ARM processor and built-in GPS/GLONASS capability...
Not long after the announcement by Intel that they would be withdrawing many of their embedded products, Sony have decided to enter the fray and will be showcasing an Arduino-compatible development board at the Tokyo Maker Faire. The board specification promises a multi-core ARM processor and built-in GPS/GLONASS capability.
Sony is normally associated with mass-produced electronic products such as TVs and more recently, high-quality professional cameras. An Arduino-sized development board bearing the name of Sony may at first look a little out of place in the world of open-source products and hacker-space projects that normally use boards bearing the names of semiconductors Manufacturers - especially microcontrollers and SoC producers. Sony is, never the less also a semiconductor manufacturer and is particularly strong in camera sensor technology. The fact that Sony is also synonymous with SoCs, is also obvious from the Spritzer board layout which mixes ARM technology with Ardunio features.
The Spritzer board has the same dimensions and headers assignments as the classic Arduino Uno. It is equipped with its own ARM-SoC with six Cortex-M4F cores, which can be clocked at up to 156 MHz. There are also 1.5 MB SRAM, 8 MB Flash, 6 analog inputs, 8-channel audio processing and in addition to serial interfaces such as SPI, I2C, UART, four PWM outputs and GPS / GLONASS for global position information. The physical compatibility with the Arduino Uno makes it possible to use normal Arduino shields and the Arduino IDE can be used for software development. The board should be available at the start of 2018; the price has not yet been announced. Sony has a website (in Japanese) for the Spritzer and you can read a translation (courtesy of Google) here.
Sony is normally associated with mass-produced electronic products such as TVs and more recently, high-quality professional cameras. An Arduino-sized development board bearing the name of Sony may at first look a little out of place in the world of open-source products and hacker-space projects that normally use boards bearing the names of semiconductors Manufacturers - especially microcontrollers and SoC producers. Sony is, never the less also a semiconductor manufacturer and is particularly strong in camera sensor technology. The fact that Sony is also synonymous with SoCs, is also obvious from the Spritzer board layout which mixes ARM technology with Ardunio features.
The Spritzer board has the same dimensions and headers assignments as the classic Arduino Uno. It is equipped with its own ARM-SoC with six Cortex-M4F cores, which can be clocked at up to 156 MHz. There are also 1.5 MB SRAM, 8 MB Flash, 6 analog inputs, 8-channel audio processing and in addition to serial interfaces such as SPI, I2C, UART, four PWM outputs and GPS / GLONASS for global position information. The physical compatibility with the Arduino Uno makes it possible to use normal Arduino shields and the Arduino IDE can be used for software development. The board should be available at the start of 2018; the price has not yet been announced. Sony has a website (in Japanese) for the Spritzer and you can read a translation (courtesy of Google) here.
