![\"\"](\"http:\/\/hackadaycom.files.wordpress.com\/2012\/03\/board.jpg\" "\\"board\\"")
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Sometimes, an Arduino just doesn’t have enough horsepower. Whether you’re gathering loads of sensor data and sending it over the web via Ethernet, or just trying to build a home-brew video game, it’s very easy to run into the limitations of the Arduino platform. [Rik] and his fellow classmates may have a solution to this problem with their SimpleCortex development board<\/a>.<\/p>\n The SimpleCortex began as an answer to the Arduinos [Rik] and his classmates had to use at school. \u00a0The SimpleCortex gets its name from an ARM Cortex M3 microcontroller running at 120MHz; more than fast enough to do some very interesting things, and 512kB of Flash to hold much larger programs.<\/p>\n The Arduino IDE is admittedly terrible, and big projects are a pain in the butt with a tiny 8-bit micro. SimpleCortex improves upon this development environment by using the free CoCenter<\/a>\u00a0IDE put out by CooCox<\/a>. The CoCenter IDE supports debugging and code completion, standard features on any serious desktop programming environment.<\/p>\n The SimpleCortex has Arduino-compatable header pins, so it should be easy to use existing shields, like the 3G modem<\/a> we saw this week and the NTSC video IO shield<\/a>\u00a0that can do object tracking<\/a>. While the specs of the SimpleCortex put it in a distant second to the Raspberry Pi<\/a>, sometimes you just don’t need Linux<\/em>, but a standard AVR or PIC isn’t quite enough.<\/p>\n