The Arduino Due in the shops with a price tag of $49, is bound to give a boost to the platform.

The Due, which means 2 in Italian and is pronounced "doo-eh", replaces the 8-bit, 16MHz Uno by a 32-bit, 84MHz processor board. It also comes with two micro USB ports, one for programming and communications and one that allows the Due to act as a client or host. This means it can run a USB mouse or keyboard.

The board is powered by the Atmel SAM3X8E, an ARM Cortex-M3-based processor. This gives it a boost in ADC performance from previous models. The theoretical sampling rate has gone from the 15 ksps (kilosamples per second) of the existing boards to 1,000 ksps.

Arduino has been used to build open source scientific instruments, but with the Due getting a digital-to-analog converter and an audio library it can playback .wav files. However, the Due also runs at 3.3V which should make it a lot leaner on power than its predecessors.