ARM microcontrollers takes design experience to higher ground comparing to 8 bit microcontrollers. But bigger power and flexibility also brings more complexity that might scare most of starters. In order for successful transition in to ARM world special care should be taken on developing experience. Great example is Arduino platform which simplifies all aspects of developing including writing programs within simplified IDE, robust compilation and uploading program to enjoy the results.

Galago is a project that tries to give users ARM powered developing boards wrapped with all necessary environment that helps developing and running programs without deep knowledge of hardware. It’s pretty much like Arduino experience but with more power. It can be programmed using C/C++ language along with rich library package. Since Galago board is tiny and brings only necessary hardware like I/O pins, USB and power – it can be expanded with so called app boards that are different shape than Arduino. Once app board is connected software detects it and loads necessary libraries to work with. And finally the last thing that is missing in Arduino – Debugger. Within Galago IDE you can run, step through your program run on board and hunt those errors. Hopefully this will bring new breeze in to embedded world. As announced Galago’s should be ready in Nowember 2012.