ARM Community: Your 2010 Guide to a Gadget-filled, ARM Powered Holiday: Part 1 - ARM Community

Another holiday season is upon us. As I look back over the years, there are certain holiday gifts I’ve received that really stand out in my mind: my first CD player, cell phone, mp3 player, digital camera, laptop… Are you sensing a theme here? Gadgets make for fun, memorable gifts that everyone enjoys and most of the time make our lives easier.

I’ve put together a holiday gift list, divided into 3 categories, of some of my favorite ARM Powered Gadgets. Let’s kick it off with Part 1:

Fun Gifts for Kids, Teens & College Students

• Air Hogs Hawk Eye – Keep your kids entertained for hours with this Cortex-A8-based remote controlled helicopter. It has a camera mounted on the front that allows in-flight video recording, which can be uploaded and edited on a computer.

• Archos 10₁ Internet Tablet – This tablet has a 10.1-inch screen that displays high-definition multimedia, a webcam, an adjustable leg stand, an output for displaying on wide screen TVs, 3D gaming, and you can even plug into your 3G mobile phone or use Wifi to browse the internet. Runs Android 2.2 on an ARM Cortex-A8.

Archos Internet Tablet

• Livescribe Echo Smartpen – I’m quite envious these weren’t around when I was in school… This ARM9 powered smartpen records words with its tiny microphone and synchronizes them as you write notes on special “smartpaper”. You can then tap anywhere on your notes and hear the synchronized audio. For more information, read gadget guru Jan Howells’ blog.

Livescribe Smartpen

• GamePark GP2X Caanoo - This ARM9 based Linux gaming device allows users to download open-source games via Wi-Fi, listen to music or read e-books.

• mbed Kit - This mbed kit contains the mbed microcontroller, a USB cable, a pinout card and a "getting started" guide. All the tools and libraries are hosted on the mbed.org developer website. The forums and cookbook demonstrate the diversity of applications for this product. At this year’s ARM Techcon we used mbed microcontrollers for a Robot Racing contest (video below). Kits cost $60/£40 – more details on mbed.org/order

mbed Microcontroller



Selecting gifts for this age group can be somewhat daunting, but hopefully this gives you a good start. Don’t forget – there are more devices and categories to come, so stay tuned for Parts 2 & 3 of my list!

Cara Forsythe, Digital Marketing, ARM. Although she's fairly new to the tech scene, Cara is on a fast track to becoming a full-fledged tech geek and couldn’t be happier about it. Cara enjoys working at ARM where she is able to utilize her interests in digital media, innovative gadgets and the latest technologies to gain a wide perspective on the fascinating and evolving world of technology.