Freescale looks to Arduino community with low cost development board
The €10 Freedom development board has deliberately been designed in the Arduino form factor and is available as open source hardware so that it can be made anywhere in the world without licensing or royalties, says Geoff Lees, general manager of the industrial and multi-market microcontroller division at Freescale. It uses the Kinetis L family of microcontrollers which are now shipping in volume for under €2.
"It has been designed to work with an Arduino shield (add on board) and we would love the Arduino community to be interested in the M0+," he said. "It’s something we hope wil happen."
This is part of a move to triple its customer base over the next three years, he says. More support will come from global distributors and etailers such as Digikey, Mouser and element14 which have all started shipping the board this week.
"The global etailers have a reach that we as semidocnutor vendors are unable to comprehend," he said. "We are looking to increate our cusotmer base two to three times over the next three years andwe are well aware of the extra support we need to do that."
Web forums and self-help videos are also a key part of supporting a wider customer base. "The value of the ARM ecosystem and core is the support cost is a lot lower and we have web communities and web support which have helped us broaden the reach," he said.
www.freescale.com
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