Arduino Introduces an Ultra-Compact Dual-Core Nicla Vision Board

The Nicla line of boards costs $115 and features an inbuilt 2MP camera, IMU, microphone, ToF distance sensor, and crypto coprocessor.

The Nicla Vision is the latest addition to Arduino's small Nicla family of boards, bringing computer vision and machine learning to the edge with an embedded two-megapixel image sensor and high-performance STMicroelectronics STM32H7 microcontroller.

The Arduino Team describes their latest release as "a fresh new, ready-to-use, 2MP standalone camera that allows you to examine and process pictures on the edge for sophisticated machine vision and edge computing applications." "You may now include image identification, facial recognition, automated optical inspection, car plate reading, gesture recognition, and other features into your projects."

The new Nicla Vision is driven by a dual-core STMicro STM32H747AII6 processor with 480MHz Arm Cortex-M7 core and a 280MHz Cortex-M4 core, 1MB of RAM, 2MB of flash memory, and 16MB of external QSPI flash for extra storage in the company's smallest form factor, the 22.8622.86mm (0.90.9") Nicla.

The board has a two megapixel colour camera sensor as well as a six-axis inertial measurement unit ()IMU, a time-of-flight (ToF) distance sensor, and a microphone. An XP SE050C2 cryptographic coprocessor, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.2 Low Energy (BLE) connection, a high-speed USB interface, and support for an optional 3.7V lithium-polymer battery with integrated charging and fuel gauge are all included.

According to the Arduio team, the board supports OpenMV and MicroPython, provides image detection and identification, distance, sound, movement, and vibration data recording, and can be used as a drop-in replacement for projects based on the company's Portenta and MKR board lines.

The new board follows the debut of the Nicla Sense ME late last year, the company's first board to leverage the tiny Nicla form factor and its first relationship with Bosch for sensor integration.

"The Nicla form factor has been particularly created at Arduino as a standard for wireless sensor networks," the Arduino team stated at the time, adding that it "may be used by partners to produce custom-designed industrial solutions."

More information about the Nicla Vision board can be found on the Arduino website, or it may be acquired directly from Arduino's store for $115 right now.