Demand for low cost development platforms continues unabated

These platforms have come a long way since the Arduino format was introduced in 2005. Because the Arduino approach is open source, variations on a theme have appeared – including the creatively named Raspduino. Beagle Board – next along in 2008 – was something of a mould breaker. Built around Texas Instruments' OMAP3530 SoC, it gave access to an ARM Cortex-A8 processor, a 2D/3D graphics processor and a multimedia accelerator. All of a sudden, embedded system development became more accessible. Previously, engineers had a choice of developing their projects on PCs, almost always limiting them to an x86 processor and Windows, or using relatively expensive development boards from microcontroller suppliers. With Arduino, Beagle Board, Raspberry Pi and ARM's mbed format, engineers can get their hands on a relatively cheap, but very capable, development board that runs Linux and which introduces them to open source software. More importantly, perhaps, the advent of such boards opened embedded system development to hobbyists, who had effectively been disenfranchised by the relatively 'closed shop' approach of technology suppliers. Yet, despite the apparent dominance of the Raspberry Pi, the Arduino board format is perhaps the most popular. So can you have too many such boards and formats? Apparently not. Two more devices have been launched recently – Imagination unveiled the CI20, while Broadcom added an IoT prototyping kit to its WICED development platform. Imagination's offering is particularly interesting, although it hasn't announced a price. Its plan is to give away the boards it has to selected projects and the demand crashed its website. So customers are, apparently, saying 'keep them coming'. But is this heavy demand coming from industry, however? When Raspberry Pi was launched, it was intended to be an educational device, but it has turned out that engineers are not only 'playing' with Pis, but also integrating them into products. Has the educational goal fallen by the wayside? Low cost development platforms are a revolution; and revolutions continue. It will be interesting to see where the technology heads.