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

• Extensive peripheral set (I2C, UART, SPI) and large number of GPIOs (ref)

• Unmatched Analog-Digital Converter complement and resolution

• Flexible power supply options and built-in regulators

Shortcomings

• A little more expensive than other options (e.g. the Arduino or Netduino)

• 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)