Microchip Offers Reward for Opensource TCP/IP and USB

Unless you have been living under a rock for the last month, you undoubtedly have read about Dangerous prototypes stab at Microchip for not releasing the source code for the TCP/IP Stack and USB stacks used on the chipKIT Arduino Compatible boards. That single posting snowballed into a huge debate in the community on whether or not it really mattered if the stacks were open or not since Microchip lets anyone freely download them. Gene Apperson of Digilent was the first to respond with a posting on Hack A Day saying that it has been his intention from the beginning for the entire tool chain to be completely open and that Digilent’s decision to use the closed source stacks was simply based on the need to get something working quickly for the launch of the chipKIT Networking shield… More after the jump.

A few months ago we covered Microchip and Digilent's first entry into the Arduino community: The chipKIT line of Arduino compatible PIC32 MCU boards. News spread fast and it seems like anyone who is serious about Arduino dev has picked up at least one of the chipKIT boards. Shortly after the launch of the UNO32 and Max32 board, Digilent announced the existance of 2 shields slated for release in June: The chipKIT Networking shield and chipKIT General I/O shield. June quickly passed and July came and went  with no word on the release date for either shield. Well today Microchip and Digilent have officially released both the Networking shield and the General I/O shield. We received our evaluation samples about 3 weeks ago and are planning full writeups on both shields in the next few days. In the mean time we have some exciting photos as well as the full press release after the jump. 

Back in May we were the first to formally introduce you to Digilent's chipKIT line of Arduino compatible PIC32 based development boards. Digilent liked our coverage so much that they sent an army of their Pmods led by their Cerebot masters to take over our workbench. We have a ton of stuff to cover from Digilent in the coming weeks and if they manufacture something you would like to see covered here on TheMakersWorkbench just let us know in the comments and we will do our best to give it a full write up... Keep reading after the jump.

MPIDE: One IDE to Rule Them All

If you read this site you are more than likely familiar with Arduino and the Arduino IDE. If not let me briefly bring you up to speed. 

The Arduino IDE is a cross-platform application written in Java, and is derived from the IDE for the Processing programming language and the Wiring project. It is designed to introduce programming to artists and other newcomers unfamiliar with software development. It includes a code editor with features such as syntax highlighting, brace matching, and automatic indentation, and is also capable of compiling and uploading programs to the board with a single click. There is typically no need to edit makefiles or run programs on the command line... Keep reading after the jump.

Digilent Releases chipKIT Uno32 and Max32

Last week we posted an image of Digilent’s new 100% Arduino Mega Compatible dev board dubbed Max32. Normally a new Arduino board would not be news worthy, but this one is based around a Microchip Pic32 instead of one of Atmel’s AVR Chips. I won’t lie, we have known about this board for a couple of weeks now. In fact Microchip’s PR department contacted us about receiving a sample board along with an invite to attend their official online launch and press conference which was held about 2 hours ago. Keep reading to find out some interesting facts about Digilent’s new MCU boards the MAX32 and Uno32.