Cloud lifts with availability of wireless Arduino board from RS Components

KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA: RS Components, the trading brand of Electrocomponents plc, the world's leading high service distributor of electronics and maintenance products, is now stocking Arduino Yun, the first member of a new family of wireless products that integrate the open-source Arduino architecture with Linux.

Arduino Yun, meaning 'cloud' in Chinese language, combines the existing Arduino Leonardo, based on Atmel's ATmega32u4 8-bit MCU, with an embedded Atheros AR9331 Wi-Fi SoC running Linino, a MIPS GNU/Linux variant of OpenWRT.

The principal feature of the new board is a Bridge library, which makes it easy to navigate complex web services that use verbose, RAM-intensive text-based formats such as XML by delegating all network connections and processing of HTTP transactions to the Linux-based SoC.

In common with Arduino Leonardo, the Yun has features such as 14 digital input/output pins, seven PWM channels and 12 analog inputs. It also incorporates a 16MHz crystal oscillator and a microUSB connector plus a standard-A type USB connection and a PoE compatible microSD card socket for additional storage.

Once the Yun is powered up for the first time it functions as a Wi-Fi access point, creating a Wi-Fi network called 'Arduino'. The board can then be configured by entering a Wi-Fi network name and password.

"The Yun is a welcome addition to the Arduino family for anyone wishing to develop interactive objects and environments," said Jon Boxall, global head of semiconductors, RS Components. "Its availability is especially timely for the burgeoning IoT market, opening the door to a whole host of new open-source design opportunities and applications that were previously out of reach using existing Arduino boards."

The new Arduino Yun, plus other members of the Arduino family, is available to purchase direct from RS stock for same day despatch along with a range of extension boards.