Arduino Due

The Due is an open source precise microcontroller board based on the Atmel SAM3X8E ARM Cortex-M3 CPU. It is the newcomer and 1st board based on a 32-bit ARM core microcontroller. It adds new features and improve all the standard functionalities.

It offer 54 digital input/output pins (of which 12 can be used as PWM outputs, with selectable resolution), 12 analog inputs with 12 bit of resolution, 4 UARTs (hardware serial ports), and two DAC outputs (digital to analog converter), 84 MHz crystal oscillator, two USB connections, a power jack, an ICSP header, a JTAG header, and a reset button. The maximum voltage that the I/O pins can provide or tolerate is 3.3V. Providing higher voltages, like 5V to an input pin could damage the board.

The Due has two usb connectors, the one with the micro-usb AB connector is the native one capable to act as an USB host, that means you can connect compatible external usb peripherals to the board, such as mouse, keyboards, smartphones. While the other USB port with the type B connector is intended for debugging purposes.

The Due is compatible with all shields that work at 3.3V and are compliant with the pinout.

The SAM3X has 512KB (2 blocks of 256KB) of flash memory for storing code. The bootloader is preburned in factory from Atmel and is stored in a dedicated ROM memory. The available SRAM is 96KB in two contiguous bank of 64KB and 32KB. All the available memory (Flash, RAM and ROM) can be accessed directly as a flat addressing space.

It is possible to erase the Flash memory of the SAM3X with the onboard erase button. This will remove the currently loaded sketch from the MCU. To erase, press and hold the Erase button for a few seconds while the board is powered.