Leaflabs Maple
The LeafLabs Maple is a 32-bit microcontroller platform created by LeafLabs.
The LeafLabs Maple has reached end of life and is no longer sold or supported.
The leaflabs Maple is programmed in C using a provided library, libmaple (ref), to make programming similar to the Arduino environment. Some of the GPIO pins on the Maple are aligned with the Arduino form factor.
Features
Fast, powerful 32-bit ARM processor with lots of memory (ref)
Fits the Arduino form factor, so many Arduino shields are usable
Low Power Consumption for performance, same processor as VEX Cortex
Programmed in native C code with excellent low-level library
Unmatched Analog-Digital Converter complement and resolution
Flexible power supply options and built-in regulators
Shortcomings
Not all pins are 5 Volt Tolerant
Slew Rate and Output Drive leave some to be desired (but are substantially better than PandaBoard-like alternatives)
Versions
The Maple comes in two versions - the Maple rev5 based on the STM32F103RBT6 processor and the discontinued RET6 beta using the STM32F103RET6 processor. The RET6 offers additional peripherals and a much bigger program memory space at the expense of gotchas due to re-use of the rev5 board design; the future Maple II processor may feature this chip.
Current development
The Maple was used by SIGBOTS for VEX Toss Up on both robots as an I/O expander. Due to the limited ADCs and GPIOs available on the VEX Cortex, there are insufficient ports for extra peripherals such as a serial LCD screen.
The Maple supersedes the somewhat unreliable and slow Netduino. Although the Maple lacks a floating-point unit, it has enough horsepower to process a Kalman filter for the next generation of digital gyros.
Teams Contributed to this Article:
BLRS (Purdue SIGBots)
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