MKRZero, Arduino Newest Family Member

Arduino had announced a new member of its family: MKRZero! This new board comes with the size of 61x25mm MKR1000 board and the power of ARM-core Arduino Zero.

The ARM-core board consists of an on-board SD connector with dedicated SPI interfaces (SPI1) that make it easy to browse your files with no extra hardware.

You can power your MKRZero using a micro-USB cable or a LiPo battery, but you should pay attention that the operation voltage is 3.3.V and applying higher voltages to any I/O pin will ruin the board. To guarantee the voltage, you can use a battery and monitor it using analog converter.

The small size, low power consumption, integrated battery management, and integrated SD management are some of the advantages of this great tiny board.

MKRZero has 22 digital I/O pins, 12x PWM, 1x UART, 1x SPI, 1x I2C,32x LED_BUILTIN, 7x analog input pins, 1x analog output and 8x external interrupts. Here are the hardware specifications:

• Microcontroller: SAMD21 Cortex-M0+ 32bit low power ARM MCU
• Board Power Supply (USB/VIN): 5V
• Supported Battery: Li-Po single cell, 3.7V, 700mAh minimum
• DC Current for 3.3V Pin: 600mA
• DC Current for 5V Pin: 600mA
• Circuit Operating Voltage: 3.3V
• DC Current per I/O Pin: 7 mA
• Flash Memory: 256 KB
• Flash Memory for Bootloader: 8 KB
• SRAM: 32 KB
• Clock Speed: 32.768 kHz (RTC), 48 MHz

If you program your boards using Arduino Web Editor then everything is set. But to program MKRZero using Arduino IDE, you need to update the IDE by adding the new Intel SAMD Core by selecting Tools> Boards Manager as shown in the picture.

Due to its small size, MKRZero is said to be the best fit for your next innovative projects in wearable technology, high-tech automation, robotics, and much more. Some tutorials for projects using MKRZero are available now on Arduino project hub.

You can purchase the board for $22 from here. You can learn more about MKRZero at the announcement, product page, and the guide.

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