Linkit Smart Duo

Contents hide

1 Introduction

2 Linkit Smart Duo Hardware

3 Linkit Smart Duo Software

4 Where to buy

5 Final Notes

6 Related Content

7 Suggested Linkit Smart Readings

8 References

Introduction

The objective of this post is to introduce the Linkit Smart Duo, a powerful development board based on the OpenWrt Linux distribution.

Linkit Smart Duo Hardware

The Linkit Smart Duo is an open development platform based on the OpenWrt Linux distribution [1]. It is powered by a MT7688AN microprocessor (MPU) and a ATmega32U4 microcontroller (MCU) and was co-designed by Seeed Studio and Mediatek [1].

The MT7688AN MPU from Mediatek runs at 580 MHz and operates at 3.3 V [1]. It integrates a 802.11n Wi-Fi radio [2], allowing the connection to a WiFi network. You can check the other features of the chip on the datasheet.

The ATmega32U4 MPU from Atmel runs at 8 MHz on the Linkit Smart Duo (although the specs of the chip allow it to be clocked to 16 MHz [3]) and also operates at 3.3 V [1]. This is a 8 bits microcontroller with 2.5 KB of SRAM, 32 KB of FLASH and 1 KB of internal EEPROM [4].

Looking for the Linkit Smart as a whole, the board has 27 GPIOs (3 from the MPU and 24 from the MCU) operating at 3.3 V. For the MCU pins, 12 are ADC Pins, 8 are PWM Pins and 8 support external interrupts [1].

Besides the previously referred WiFi support, the board can also communicate through Serial, SPI and I2C [1]. In also includes a SD card slot for user storage [1].

In terms of memory, the board has 128MB of DDR2 RAM [1].

You can check the board in figure 1.

**Figure 1** – Linkit Smart Duo board. Taken from [1].

Linkit Smart Duo Software

As previously mentioned, the Linkit Smart Duo runs the OpenWrt Linux distribution, meaning that we can use an Operating System for the development of our aplications. A great aspect of this platform is that we can use C, Python or Node.js (Javascript) to develop applications [5], giving us much more freedom to choose.

On top of that, we can benefit from multiple OpenWrt software packages [5], allowing us to develop more complex applications. Some example packages that come by default installed in the board are cURL and OpenSSL [5].

To program the board’s MCU, we can use the Arduino IDE [5]. To do so, we just need to install a board support package that allows the development of sketches for the Linkit Smart Duo platform [5].

Where to buy

This board can be bought for approximately 16$ at the Seeed Studio website, as can be seen here.

You can also buy it at Ebay, in the store of Seeed Studio.

Final Notes

The Linkit Smart is a very powerfull platform, perfect for the IoT ecossystem. Packing a powerful MPU and complemented with a MCU, this board is a very good option for only 16$. On top of that, it is very well documented by the vendors, making it very easy to start using.

Nevertheless, it is not so much well known as Arduino or the ESP8266, and so there aren’t so many tutorials around the web.

The objective of this post was to provide just a very brief overview of the board, which has much more to offer. I encourage you to explore some of the links presented in the Related Content section, which have much more information.