Intel Arduino Galileo

It's here.  The Intel based Arduino Galileo is finally hitting retailers.  I am fortunate enough to have a Microcenter nearby and they have them at the special price of $69.99 in-store limit 1.  They are currently also at Newegg.com and Mouser Electronics with availability announced by Adafruit.  The box:

The box is not that big, It is a bit longer but shorter than the full Arduino Uno box.  It is a bit deeper as it includes a AC to DC adapter and plug adapters for several countries (Europe, UK, Australia, US):

Looking at the board, it is smaller than the publicity photos make it out to be (always happens I would say):

I am told that retailers do not put rulers in their pictures because buyers ask where their ruler is when they get it - putting a quarter coin in there is even a stretch.

Here are the specs:

Galileo is designed to support shields that operate at either 3.3V or 5V. The core operating voltage of Galileo is 3.3V. However, a jumper on the board enables voltage translation to 5V at the I/O pins. This provides support for 5V Uno shields and is the default behavior. By switching the jumper position, the voltage translation can be disabled to provide 3.3V operation at the I/O pins.

Galileo is also software compatible with the Arduino Software Development Environment (IDE), which makes usability and introduction a snap. In addition to Arduino hardware and software compatibility, the Galileo board has several PC industry standard I/O ports and features to expand native usage and capabilities beyond the Arduino shield ecosystem. A full sized mini-PCI Express slot, 100Mb Ethernet port, Micro-SD slot, RS-232 serial port, USB Host port, USB Client port, and 8MByte NOR flash come standard on the board.

Detail of Intel Architecture Supported Features
The genuine Intel processor and surrounding native I/O capabilities of the Clanton SoC provide for a fully featured offering for both the maker community and students alike. It will also be useful to professional developers who are looking for a simple and cost effective development environment to the more complex Intel® Atom processor and Intel® Core processor-based designs.

• 400MHz 32-bit Intel® Pentium instruction set architecture (ISA)-compatible processor
• 16 KBytes on-die L1 cache
• 512 KBytes of on-die embedded SRAM
• Simple to program: Single thread, single core, constant speed
• ACPI compatible CPU sleep states supported
• An integrated Real Time Clock (RTC), with an optional 3V “coin cell” battery for operation between turn on cycles
• 10/100 Ethernet connector
• Full PCI Express mini-card slot, with PCIe 2.0 compliant features
• Works with half mini-PCIe cards with optional converter plate
• Provides USB 2.0 Host Port at mini-PCIe connector
• USB 2.0 Host connector
• Support up to 128 USB end point devices
• USB Device connector, used for programming
• Beyond just a programming port - a fully compliant USB 2.0 Device controller
• 10-pin Standard JTAG header for debugging
• Reboot button to reboot the processor
• Reset button to reset the sketch and any attached shields
• Storage options:
• 8 MByte Legacy SPI Flash whose main purpose is to store the firmware (or bootloader) and the latest sketch. Between 256KByte and 512KByte is dedicated for sketch storage. The upload happens automatically from the development PC, so no action is required unless there is an upgrade that is being added to the firmware.
• Default 512 KByte embedded SRAM, enabled by the firmware by default. No action required to use this feature.
• Default 256 MByte DRAM, enabled by the firmware by default.
• Optional micro SD card offers up to 32GByte of storage
• USB storage works with any USB 2.0 compatible drive
• 11 KByte EEPROM can be programmed via the EEPROM library.

You can see the PCI-E mini slot on the back.  I am looking to re-purpose a wifi radio from a laptop to test that out.

Comparison with other Boards:

The Galileo is upper left, going clockwise the Adafruit Wave Shield, the Adafrit Motor Shield version 2, and the Arduino Uno R3.  There is not much on shield compatibility, that will have to be part of upcoming experimentation.

What You Will Not Get in the Box

What is not in the box: USB cable (A to micro B), software, any parts or shields, no micro SD card.  There is only an Ikea-like diagram in the lid of the box and a hint to go to make.intel.com.

Information You Need to Know

The available resources for getting going with your Galileo as of this post:

• Getting Started Guide (not easy to find Intel...) - https://communities.intel.com/docs/DOC-21838 
• Intel Makers Forum - https://communities.intel.com/community/makers 
• Intel Galileo Documentation - https://communities.intel.com/community/makers/documentation/galileodocuments
• Intel Downloads & Drivers - https://communities.intel.com/community/makers/drivers
• Intel Quark documentation - https://communities.intel.com/community/makers/documentation/quarkdocuments
• Intel marketing page - http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/do-it-yourself/galileo-maker-quark-board.html

• Arduino.cc Official page - http://arduino.cc/en/ArduinoCertified/IntelGalileo

I will be posting information on using this board, stay tuned.