CoAction Hero: 32-bit Open-Source ARM Cortex-M3 Board Now in India!

A powerful proto-board with a 120Mhz processor, 1MB filesystem, and built-in OS for tinkerers and engineers.

CoAction Hero is an ARM Cortex-M3 microcontroller board with a built-in operating system (CoActionOS) delivering unprecedented power and ease-of-use to your electronics projects. It includes many of the features you find on Raspberry Pi but with the ease-of-use associated with Arduino.

The OS is pre-installed allowing you to create and install your applications without ever having to configure, modify, or install the OS. If you’ve never used an OS on a project like this, don’t worry. Creating applications is much like writing simple C/C++ programs on a normal computer. Even with minimal knowledge of programming, you will be creating amazing projects in no time.

CoActionOS Ecosystem

CoActionOS is a complete hardware/firmware/software toolkit designed to deliver a powerful, easy-to-use development platform for both Windows and Mac OSX (iOS and Android coming soon). The hardware includes the CoAction Hero microcontroller board as well as stackable bluetooth and LCD device boards. The firmware is an embedded real-time operating system (RTOS) with easy-to-use hardware abstraction libraries. The software includes CoActionOS Link as well as an SDK with sample applications to enable you to easily create your own desktop applications that communicate with your embedded project over a fast virtual serial port USB connection.

Hardware

The CoAction Hero features a powerful ARM Cortex-M3 processor (NXP's LPC1759) running at up to 120MHz, a 1MB serial flash chip (which is used as a filesystem in CoActionOS), an expansion port, and micro USB connector.

Firmware

RTOS

CoActionOS is an embedded real-time operating system (RTOS) that fully integrates with the CoAction Hero microcontroller board. The firmware uses the USB micro-connector to provide a driver-free virtual serial port for both Windows and Mac. It also includes an easy-to-use filesystem utilizing the 1MB flash chip.

Easy Hardware Access

C/C++ library makes using hardware peripherals (GPIO, ADC, SPI, UART, etc) and multi-tasking as simple as can be. No need to read about registers in the datasheet. Everything is taken care of by CoActionOS.

Multi-tasking

When it comes to multi-tasking, CoActionOS is no ordinary RTOS. Applications are compiled and installed separately from the OS. Each application runs as a memory-protected pseudo-process capable of running multiple threads much like on the Raspberry Pi. This is accomplished not with an MMU but by taking advantage of the advanced hardware features of the ARM Cortex-M3 architecture. This unique feature makes using a microcontroller RTOS seamless.

Software

User Interface

CoActionOS not only integrates with the hardware, but it also connects seamlessly to a desktop computer. The user interface software (CoActionOS-Link) allows you to browse the embedded filesystem, send/receive text in a terminal, install programs, re-flash the kernel, and monitor running processes.

Create-Your-Own SDK

The Qt based SDK allows you to build your own interface. The SDK features easy-to-use Qt form classes to connect to CoActionOS, browse the filesystem, and access hardware (stdio, UART, SPI, ADC, etc)

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