Arduino Esplora, the newest member of the Arduino family is now on the market. The open-source hardware company has just released this microcontroller board that aims at prototyping electronics applications targeted for user interaction.
The design of the new Arduino Esplora resembles the design of a traditional videogame console with an analog joystick on the left and four pushbuttons on the right. More than just for gaming, the Esplora is meant to be a multi-purpose controller for various Arduino projects. It’s designed for beginners to develop various applications with a set of on-board sensors and actuators that require no breadboards or soldering.
The main board of Esplora combines a light sensor, a temperature sensor, a 3-axis accelerometer, a slider, a joystick, a set of pushbuttons, an RGB LED, and a buzzer.
Arduino Esplora includes the basic electronics features derived from the Arduino Leonardo, a previous release. Just like the Leonardo, the Esplora uses a 16 MHz crystal oscillator, an ICSP header, a reset button and a micro USB port to connect to a computer.
The Arduino Esplora seems to be a promising platform for hobbyists as it makes it easy to build user interfaces in electronics projects. All you need is some imagination.
Arduino suggests several hobby projects that use the Esplora for the user-interface, such as emulating a mouse or a keyboard, creating custom controllers for robotics or digital musical instruments, building 3D modeling tools, and even word processors.
Here are some technical specifications:
Microcontroller: ATmega32u4
Operating Voltage: 5V
Flash Memory: 32 KB of which 4 KB used by bootloader
SRAM: 2.5 KB
EEPROM: 1 KB
Clock Speed: 16 MHz