Intel Wants You To Make Wearables And Robots Yourself

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Intel has now made it easy and affordable for you to develop a wearable computer, mini-robot or smart appliance for the home. Intel’s $30 Arduino 101 board, which went on sale last week and is small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, makes it possible to do all this, says a report from PC World.

Real-time OS soon for Arduino 101

Intel’s Arduino 101 board comes with Intel’s button-sized Curie wireless compute module. At CES, the chip maker enthralled the audience with Curie-powered devices, including speech-enabled sunglasses from Oakley that can help athletes by talking in their ear.

Intel’s Arduino 101 is best suited for developers that want to create test and prototype Curie products at home, the report says. The board is equipped with a low-power Quark chip and includes an accelerometer, gyrometer and Bluetooth wireless card. The board also comes with a pattern recognition engine and includes IQs (software packages) to help in analyzing data.

It is possible to give a Windows, Linux or Mac interface to the board with the help of a USB hub. Currently, the board supports the latest Arduino 1.6.7 IDE, which can be used for writing basic programs.

Arduino, the company that helped Intel develop the board, said it is also developing a real-time OS for the Arduino 101, and this will be open-sourced in 2016. Since the Arduino 101 board is open-source, and Intel has already shared its schematics,  it will be possible to develop custom Curie circuit boards, the report says.

More Curie products from Intel at CES

Intel’s Arduino board, which is available from Mouser Electronics, has wireless circuitry, sensors and expansion ports. This is the first developer board from the chip maker based on Curie, which the company unveiled at CES last year.

But this board may not be the chip maker’s best Curie demonstration at CES. BMX bikes and snowboards were fitted with these chips to provide real-time information, such as the height and distance of jumps. Curie-enabled controllers also helped an artist paint a massive virtual canvas.

While speaking at CES, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich informed attendees that Curie chip modules priced below $10 will be shipping this quarter. According to a spokeswoman from the chip maker, commercial products based on Curie are expected to be available in the second half of this year.

On Wednesday, Intel shares closed down 2.36% at $31.91. Year to date, the stock is down by over 7%, while in the last month, it is down by over 6%.

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