What Is The QuickDAQ.mikroBUS™?
Excellent question! It requires a detailed answer. Let's face it, writing software is a lot of fun. And writing software that interacts with the real world, like embedded systems do, is even more fun. But even for seasoned experts, working with hardware can be extremely difficult, and the complexity and hassle of just getting up and going is often an enormous obstacle. The QuickDAQ.mikroBUS™ project was born out of the desire to make working with custom electronics dramatically simpler, faster, and cheaper.
The QuickDAQ.mikroBUS™ can be thought of as a board that provides your computer with the same low-level peripherals that a microcontroller has, such as GPIO, analog input, PWM, SPI, I2C, UART, etc. It comes with a standard .NET class library and can be used in any normal .NET application, so in that sense it can be thought of as a Data Acquisition (DAQ) board, thus the name "QuickDAQ". What makes it unique is that it is also specifically designed to operate in the Virtuoso Low-Code Environment.
What Is The Virtuoso Low-Code Environment?
Virtuoso is a state-of-the-art general purpose Low-Code platform, which means it gives you the ability to design applications at a high level of abstraction without writing any code. Virtuoso supports, among others, a C# .NET WPF host platform which allows you to design applications by dragging and dropping nodes, configuring them, and connecting them to each other. This is called "Node-Based Visual Programming", and Virtuoso translates your high level graphical design to a fully formed Visual Studio project that you can build and run. You can also effortlessly host virtual microprocessors in your app, which is where the power of combining the QuickDAQ.mikroBUS™ with Virtuoso really shines.
Bringing It All Together
The QuickDAQ.mikroBUS™, with the Virtuoso low-code environment, provides the absolute fastest and most flexible way to tackle your experiments, hobbies, and design projects, using code that you can always migrate to a real microcontroller. The QuickDAQ.mikroBUS™ provides the ideal base platform for any design. And for backers helping to bring this product to market, Embeddetech has partnered with Mikroe to provide some very sweet reward options. You can buy the QuickDAQ.mikroBUS™ board by itself, sure, but to fully experience the dizzyingly lightning-quick speeds in setting up your working functionality, you should definitely use this as an opportunity to load up on Click board™ sensors. With the availability of over 750 Click boards™ (and growing), the platform offers enormous versatility.
What will be your reward?
All of our Backer rewards, except the $5 "Thank you for your support!" pledge, include the QuickDAQ.mikroBUS™ board and a Virtuoso Embedded Target Development Toolkit 1-year non-commercial license. You never need an Embedded Target Development Toolkit license if you're just building low-code C# apps to control the QuickDAQ.mikroBUS™, you only need the license if you want to host virtual embedded C/C++ targets.
From there, the different rewards bundle different combinations of Click boards™ from Mikroe. You don't need Click boards™ to use the mikroBUS™ sockets, you can directly interface to the peripherals on the mikroBUS™, such as SPI, I2C, analog input, and PWM from your virtual microprocessor target or your C# application. However, we strongly recommend selecting a reward that includes Click boards™ to easily get up and running with a variety of sensors, control outputs, and real-world connectivity. Although low-code nodes for all of the Click boards™ listed below are not available at this time, they can still be accessed directly at the lower peripheral level, such as SPI and I2C. We will be working to create components for low-code access to all of these boards and more.
This campaign includes a large number of bundles that feature all kinds of Clicks so be sure to check them out and donate accordingly in order to get them.
Find more information about this Kickstarter campaign that is active now, learn how to donate and check out everything regarding this campaign by visiting the project page.
Sincerely yours,
Mikroe