Arduino MKR1000

About a month ago I submitted a project to the World's Largest Ardunio Maker Challenge (https://www.hackster.io/challenges/arduino-microsoft-maker) put on by Hackster.io, Arduino.cc, and Microsoft. My project, "Observations of Activity Level of my Fat Horses" will utilize an Arduino with an Accelerometer and GPS (perhaps a gyro as well, not sure yet), it will upload data to a Raspberry Pi running Windows 10 and upload data to the Microsoft Azure Cloud for extra credit.

As part of the competition, my project was selected as one of the 1000 projects to win the new MKR1000 board from Arduino - which I plan on using for the competition due to its size and built-in capabilities.

Stay tuned for updates and progress as I work on it.

But, on to the primary focus of this blog post - I received my MKR1000 today and wanted to help out folks who may be also receiving one of these boards because there is not a lot of documentation on the 'Net just yet on the board.

The one spot I was able to find a bit of documentation was at https://www.hackster.io/charifmahmoudi/arduino-mkr1000-getting-strarted-08bb4a

In summary for those a bit more experienced and just wanting the facts:

1. The board uses a Cortex-M0+ processor, which is not included in the default boards that the Arduino IDE comes with. There are two options:
1. Download the nightly build for the Arduino IDE version 1.6.8, it has the actual MKR1000 board in the most recent build
2. Use the "Arduino/Genuino Zero (Native USB Port)" in earlier versions (I am using this one at this time and it works like a champ)
2. In either case in #1 above, you will have to load the "Arduino SAMD Boards (32-bit ARM Cortex-M0+)" from the Board Manager to get either the Zero or MKR1000 board specification to load.
3. The on-board LED is on Pin 6 (not 13 as most Arduino boards are)
4. It appears the Wifi101 drivers are the appropriate ones for the Wifi on the MKR1000, with a slight caveat that requires downloading the latest drivers from Github. From the Hackster.io page noted above:
1. From Manage Libraries, search for '101' and install the Wifi101 drivers
2. If the Wifi101 drivers are version 0.7.0 or previous, download the latest from Github (https://github.com/arduino-libraries/WiFi101/archive/master.zip) and replace the files in your Arduino Library folder under Wifi101 (for OSX, by default, that would be in /Users/<username>/Documents/Arduino/libraries/Wifi101)

Check back for further details as I play with the MKR1000 more.

UPDATE: It appears that if you are using the "Arduino/Genuino Zero (Native USB Port)" to connect from OSX, the Serial Port is not able to use the same USB connection. So, you'll need some type of Serial to USB converter - for me, that is my trusty Bus Pirate. On the MKR1000 ports 13 (TX) and 14 (RX) are the UART serial.

UPDATE #2: The SAMD boards version 1.6.4 does not seem to have the MKR1000 definitions - but the 1.6.3 version does. You can installed the older version and get the Arduino MKR1000 Board Definition, and the Serial Monitor via USB works perfect.