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I suspect that PCB was designed by Intel engineers who are unfamiliar with AVR and the many quirks of Arduino.

It might also be a non-function "mock up". If you look closely at the high res photo, there's a number of strange things. The vias don't seem to have any holes. Maybe they used a filled/plugged via process? But why bother with such an expensive thing when the BGA under the Curie has only two columns that are 4 balls wide? That's easy escape routing where you wouldn't need via-in-pad. There's also a few places where traces go to nowhere, in little round voids that look like they were supposed to have a pad. By guess is they weren't done, but had a hard deadline to show something in Rome this weekend.
 
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Some big companies do things by default that wouldn't make sense costwise for small companies... and maybe they intended to add ICT test points but forgot to clear the soldermask from them? I've had boards come in that way before...
 
Yeah, but this doesn't look like test points mistakenly covered with solder mask. Can you see any hint of holes in these vias?

For example, here's the lower right corner of the Curie.

1.jpg

Notice the trace coming out from underneath the Curie, but then it appears to connect to nothing, with a via-size empty area?

There's also a pair of unpopulated pads, with another via-shaped void above the right side.

Also, notice the lines just to the right of those unpopulated pads. That's a trace from pin 9 of a LSF0108 chip below, which routes up to near the Curie but just ends without connecting to anything.

Here's where that trace goes. This picture shows pins 10 to 4, and part of pin 3.

2.jpg

Notice anything strange about pin 7?

There are several more of these oddities around the photo. Maybe there's a good reason for them, but I'm having a hard time imagining any explanation other than they ran out of time and just made a mock up.
 
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Seems odd to go through the trouble of building a board whose vias weren't drilled! Perhaps this is a 2-layer mockup of the final product for fit and finish? So just the two out layers... Nice to show around but not functional, i.e. good for press junkets and the like where good boards may actually disappear.

The use of digital level shifters on an analog input still has me scratching my head. Without access to the backside of the board, we won't know if there is something else hiding (i.e. a series of op-amps buffering a voltage-divided input stage, for example). At this price-point, I'm somewhat doubtful that a good analog front-end is in the cards.

I also wonder to what extent the analog front end won't be influenced by the Bluetooth module / antenna nearby. I suppose if all they aim for is 10 bit resolution or less, they may get away with it. Or maybe they solve this problem in software by disabling Bluetooth TX around the time that an analog reading is made. Could make for some interesting code pretzels for the RTOS to figure out.
 
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Those LSF0108 level shifters are just N-channel transistor switches which require pullup resistors. Maybe the 40 required resistors are also hiding on the back side?

I wonder if they'll also use transistors to disconnect those pullups when analogRead() is used?
 
For achieving reliable 5V operation of the IO I'd have thought running a slave CPU as a port expander might have been the way to go (not politically very viable though), or better a Core with the high performance 1.x volt logic and a variable voltage I/O interface. Regardless I can see that taking fall advantage of the low voltage cores is going to be another skill to learn.
 
Yes, making a port expander slave IC work properly would have it doing much of the work, and be great fun to make libraries for. Possibly having a southbridge is overkill on a sensible micro controller board.

edit: picture in my head is an Intel engineer tasked with achieving perfect Uno pin compatibility putting an atmega328 full of libraries on the board as the I/O port.
 
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Likewise (or especially) the Arduino board for the Edison! For example it is a real pain in ... to change an IO pin from Input to Output (or Output to Input).

Example if you were to use linux commands to setup IO pin 5 as input, it would look something like:
Code:
# echo 13 > /sys/class/gpio/export
# echo 253 > /sys/class/gpio/export
# echo 221 > /sys/class/gpio/export
# echo 214 > /sys/class/gpio/export
# echo low > /sys/class/gpio/gpio214/direction
# echo low > /sys/class/gpio/gpio253/direction
# echo in > /sys/class/gpio/gpio221/direction
# echo mode0 > /sys/kernel/debug/gpio_debug/gpio13/current_pinmux
# echo in > /sys/class/gpio/gpio13/direction
# echo high > /sys/class/gpio/gpio214/direction
Obviously the exports only need to be done once... Programmatically wise the MRAA library (or the Arduino code), does similar stuff. To do the actual Inputs and Outputs for the actual IO pins, you do have memory mapped access so those can be done reasonably quick, but the others are done through file system and mux's and the like are controlled I believe by SPI (might have been I2C)...

Example: Earlier I tried to do something simple like try to use a ping sensor, where you had to first set the IO pin to output, output a short pulse, switch to input mode and wait for the sensor to generate a pulse, where the width gives you the distance. The original code would hang as by the time the switch from output to input, would complete, the return pulse already happened. I got it sped up in MRAA, to make it somewhat work, likewise had a version of Arduino code that worked OK, but I don't think that code was ever integrated back into official Intel code...
 
I found an article with a high-res photo of the back side. No parts at all.

genuinoback.jpg
(click for full size)

Since we know those LFS0108 chips require 2 pullup resistors per signal for bidirectional operation, I believe it's pretty safe to conclude these boards are non-functional.
 
It's interesting that farnell element 14 is mentioned in the announcement but still selling arduino in the uk (no mention of genuino). RS Same.

At least there is movement though, and it does looks like a reasonable product within the range, pricewise and featurewise.

I'm tired of waiting for genuino now, I'm moving on.
I sell more adafruit / PJRC kit than arduino anyway (! working on this - it's the joy of the Ebay Best Match algorithm, combined with a marketing budget of zero driving a similar quantity of traffic to my webstore.).

Responding to a previous comment I think Constantin covered it all, yes, I considered making my own set of boards. I also considered pioneering (and trademarking) an "Arduino Contribution" icon for the silkscreen which I could license people to use, to secure a smaller contribution per sale of the device back to the core dev team (say 7%, around 60p for an Uno Clone selling for half the price of an Arduino one).
The idea being that a cheap chinese board which works, AND contributes back to the team is a gap in the market, and one which, currently the Arduino team get absolutely nothing for.

It might pull the rug out from their premium branded products.
Or...
it might coerce the chinese board-buyers to spend a few pennies more and support the team without feeling mugged on a full price arduino board.

But then I realised
1) I'm a software guy
2) Arduino should be on top of this and they aren't, so why should I bother? I can contribute back to the makerspace in other ways which better suit my skillset.
3) I could do it, and I could make a success of it (after a steep learning curve) but I'm a firm believer in picking my battles. This is not, in horrible corporate business speak, the "low hanging fruit", for me.

I'm just trying to do the right thing and support the right team but ultimately, for now, I'm shifting boxes. I have some Teensy based products in the works and they are a lot more more fun to work on, and far better supported.
 
I see Arduino SRL just renamed their upcoming "Arduino Industrial" (looks like a Yun in different form factor) to "Arduino Industrial 101".

Guess they didn't want to be left out of having a product named "101", now that Arduino LLC is selling a Wifi shield and announced the Curie board using "101".
 
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/802007522/up-intel-x5-z8300-board-in-a-raspberry-pi2-form-fa/

This looks more like a sensible Intel product. To me a low spec, economic x86 board seems to fit better into the DNA of Intel than a high-overhead, low cost embedded chip.

I'm wondering about the power consumption of this little beast. Lots of stuff in a small space with no heat sink or fan... Would it throttle itself down like crazy if half a dozen peripherals were plugged in and the SoC was rendering video and 3d graphics, etc.?
 
Industrial Available in November? 'Sketchy' image and details - not sure what I expected from 'Industrial' based on my first jobs in '85-91 - an 8bit blob with a couple of I/O wouldn't have done much 30 years ago - though the 'Industrial PLC's my PC talked to had corporations (TI and Honeywell) of infrastructure behind them and expensive hardened I/O and probably wimpier processors doing the work then.

Also went by the 'store' - had to pick USA - then the items showing are few (8) and not priced in dollars and include things like: "Arduino Starter kit - CHINESE €87.89 " - which is later detailed as 'ITALIAN EDITION - CHINESE LANGUAGE'?

Stopped by Arduino.cc: Arduino 101 (U.S.) and Genuino 101 (outside the U.S.). The board features a 32-bit Intel® Quark™ microcontroller for minimal power consumption, 384 kB of flash memory, 80 kB of SRAM (24kB available for sketches) :: Arduino 101 & Genuino 101 are the ideal successor of the UNO updated with the latest technologies.
 
I'm wondering about the power consumption of this little beast. Lots of stuff in a small space with no heat sink or fan... Would it throttle itself down like crazy if half a dozen peripherals were plugged in and the SoC was rendering video and 3d graphics, etc.?

They posted an update that said 'sign up for newsletter: http://www.up-board.org/

I did and the newsletter sourced back to this company - they offer a variety of computers on boards: http://www.aaeon.com/en/

<edit> I forgot to close my loop - I pointed out that the 'aaeon' folks to imply they should be able to design a stable machine without heat issues. and as Epyon notes the CPU is 2W TDP in a larger chip than the 1.5 W passed in the smaller LDO in a plastic case used on the new T_3.2 - and that cpu will also have larger planes to carry the heat away. But it is $100 not $30.
 
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I'm wondering about the power consumption of this little beast. Lots of stuff in a small space with no heat sink or fan... Would it throttle itself down like crazy if half a dozen peripherals were plugged in and the SoC was rendering video and 3d graphics, etc.?
The SoC has a TDP of 2W. Throw in another Watt or two for peripherals. It's still powered by a 5V wall wart.

They posted an update that said 'sign up for newsletter: http://www.up-board.org/

I did and the newsletter sourced back to this company - they offer a variety of computers on boards: http://www.aaeon.com/en/
Yes, it's a daughter company of Asus. The UP seems to be a collaboration between them and Emutex, an Irish company specialising in embedded software.
 
is this like when seagate bought maxtor and started sending refurbed maxtors as replacements and increasing failure rates on newer drives due to their aquired facilities? LOL
 
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