This is the Maple prototype, our first version of an Arduino-compatible board with an STM32 ARM Cortex-M3 processor. We’re chomping at the bits to release it as soon as we tie up a couple loose ends to make it what we think it should be. We’ve ported all the Arduino language and are modifying the Arduino environment so that everything works how it should. Notice that Maple does not have an FTDI chip, so serial communication works through a USB Virtual COM Port that’s implemented on the STM32, so it may even be slightly easier to setup than Arduino boards because FTDI drivers aren’t required, and the drivers for the Virtual COM Port are probably already on your Mac or Linux machine; for Windows, you’ll just use the driver that we include with the software download.

We’re also extending the Arduino language to allow users to do things with the STM32 that the Atmega chips cannot do such as easy setting up of different types of USB devices (HID for crazy mouses, mass storage, or full speed USB 2.0 data transfer)  and other communication protocols (USART, SPI, I2C, I2S, CAN), providing higher bandwidth capabilities.

To allow people an opportunity to experiment with the performance benefits of Maple, we’re designing a couple shields to stack on. The one I’m most excited about is the audio shield. I love programming real-time audio synthesis and effects processing algorithms and have experimented with these things on Arduino. Audio processing is one thing that can quickly lead to hitting the limitations of the Arduino AVR processors. I like to simulate real-time audio effects processing with MATLAB (though I’m starting to move to Python) by importing an audio file and writing an algorithm that slides a buffer through the audio data as if it were being captured in real-time from a guitar or something. It’s disappointing to create a cool effect that takes too much processing or memory to implement on the embedded hardware you’re using, so I can’t wait to allow people more flexibility here and for other things. Another shield we might do is an OLED display with a little trackball or joystick. I haven’t seen an OLED display shield at a reasonable cost. We’re open to suggestions!