I’d love to have an Arduino compatible board with a SAM3X8E chip and AltIMU-10 sensors. Presently I’m using an Arduino Due and an AltIMU-10 to control a model aircraft, however I am finding the Due is very bulky and is physically not well suited for this purpose. The website for my project is http://www.camelsoftware.com/firetail/
Ideally what I am after is something with
2x I2C ports, with the AltIMU-10 sensors on one of them
At least 3 UART serial ports
6x 5V tolerant digital IO pins for reading from an RC receiver
6x 5V logic level digital pins for driving servos
An I2C EEPROM chip to store settings would be nice
Plus a few analog pins for measuring voltages
A similar board is the FlyMaple, however it has no analog pins and less SRAM. I suppose the biggest point of difference between the FlyMaple and this proposed board is that I have autopilot software ready for it, plus a sizeable audience following the projects blog. Would Pololu be interested in developing this?
Your project looks interesting. We are not currently interested in developing a board based on the SAM3X8E.
Good luck on your project. I would love to hear more about it. If you feel like sharing, you can post about your project in the Share Your Projects section of our forum.
If we were going to make something based on a Cortex M3, it would probably be the STM32 since we have used that on other products. However, an autopilot-type product like you are talking about is a substantial development project, so while we might be interested in it at some point, it is not something we can do soon. There are also many products like this out there, so it would take a lot of work to figure out if there is even anything special we could offer.