Arduino announced an expansion of its Arduino Create development platform for deploying Arduino sketches on Linux systems to support Arm boards like the Raspberry Pi and BeagleBone in addition to Intel boards like the UP Squared.
In November, Arduino announced a version of its Arduino Create toolkit that supports Intel-based systems running Linux, with specific support for a new UP Squared IoT Grove Development Kit. Today at the Embedded Linux Conference in Portland, where Arduino co-founder and CTO Massimo Banzi is a keynote speaker, Arduino announced an expansion of Arduino Create to support Arm boards. The platform provides optimized support for the Raspberry Pi and BeagleBone boards.
Arduino Create is a web-based companion application to the Arduino IDE that provides a more modern, cloud-savvy development environment equipped with a web editor and collaboration tools. With the expansion to Linux hacker boards, Arduino developers can deploy Arduino sketches on the SBCs “as if they were regular Arduino boards,” says Arduino.
Multiple Arduino programs can run simultaneously on the Linux-based boards, and can “interact and communicate with each other, leveraging the capabilities provided by the new Arduino Connector,” explains Arduino, referring to software that enables communication between a device and Arduino Create via the cloud. In addition, IoT devices can be managed and updated remotely, says the company and open source project.
As with the optimized support for the now shipping UP Squared IoT Grove Development Kit, which combines Aaeon’s Intel Apollo Lake based UP Squared SBC with Seeed’s Arduino compatible Grove Pi+ extension board, a display, and Grove sensors, Arduino is supporting Raspberry Pi and BeagleBone boards with an “out-of-the-box experience.” The process eases set-up of a new device via the cloud using “an intuitive web-based wizard,” says Arduino.
Arduino Create appears to work with any Raspberry Pi or BeagleBone model that is running Debian, which in the case of the Pi would include Raspbian. There’s another setup page that lets you set up any Cortex-A Arm board running Debian, but without the optimization. No other requirements were listed. Back in November, Arduino said the generic Intel x86 setup required any board based on an Intel Atom, Intel Core, or Intel Xeon processor running either Ubuntu or Intel’s own Wind River Pulsar Linux.
Arduino appear to be offering closer integration with the UP Squared IoT Grove Development Kit than with the Pi or BeagleBone. With the UP Squared, Arduino Create supports libraries such as OpenCV, Intel’s Math Kernel Library (MKL) and MRAA HAL library for low-speed I/O communication. The software integrates with C++ development environments, and enables developers to export sketches as CMake projects in order to bridge to more advanced tools such as Intel System Studio 2018.
In the case of the UP Squared board, Arduino Create supports system calls and ships with examples using Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure cloud services. It’s unclear if these extras are available in the Arm versions.
The Arduino Create Linux versions that support the Raspberry Pi, BeagleBone, and UP Squared IoT Grove Development Kit, as well as generic Arm and x86 profiles is available now. More information may be found on the Arduino Create page.