The Arduino MKR WiFi 1010

Mar 6, 2020

An overview of the Arduino MKR WiFi 1010 board, with built-in WiFi and Bluetooth, a 32-bit SAMD21 Cortex-M0+ processor, and how it compares to Arduino Uno.

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I recently added to my set of electronics “stuff” an Arduino MKR WiFi 1010 board.

If you are wondering, I found out that MKR is pronounced “Maker”, and 1010 is pronounced “ten ten”.

It is the first board that has WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity built-in, and I’m very excited about the opportunities and possibilities it enables.

In this post I want to give an overview of the board, and compare it to the Arduino Uno, which is the other Arduino board I currently have, and the one most commonly used by beginners, too.

Form factor

Let’s start from the appearance.

It measures 61.4mm x 25mm and only weighs 32 grams.

Arduino MKR WiFi 1010 board showing its compact blue PCB with WiFi module, pins, and components on a wooden surface

Compared to the Arduino Uno board, the Arduino MRK WiFi 1010 is much smaller. More than 2x smaller.

Size comparison between large Arduino Uno board on left and compact MKR WiFi 1010 board on right on wood surface

Power

The Arduino MKR WiFi 1010 can be powered with an 5V input, or with a Micro-USB connector.

Arduino MKR WiFi 1010 board showing the micro-USB connector and JST battery connector for power input options

It operates at 3.3V. This is a very important distinction with Arduino Uno, which operates at 5V. 3.3V is the maximum voltage the I/O pins can support.

Processor

The Arduino MKR WiFi 1010 board comes with a low power SAMD21 Cortex-M0+ 32-bit ARM processor.

The processor is 32 bit. The Arduino Uno board features the ATmega328 processor, which is 8 bit.

Memory

The board has 256KB of Flash Memory and 32KB of SRAM.

Back side of Arduino MKR WiFi 1010 showing pin layout, Arduino logo, and board specifications printed on blue PCB

I/O Pins

The Arduino MKR WiFi 1010 provides:

8 Digital I/O pins, pins 0 - 7.
7 Analog Input pins (ADC 8/10/12 bit), pins A0 / A6.
1 Analog Output pin (DAC 10 bit), the pin identified with DAC0/A0.

Bottom view of Arduino MKR WiFi 1010 showing underside circuitry and pin connections with male header pins attached

The DC current per I/O pin is 7mA.

Pins 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 12, 18, 19 are PWM pins.

Arduino MKR WiFi 1010 with pin expansion board showing labeled pins like 5V, VIN, VCC, GND, RESET, and digital pins

The full pinout can be found here.

IoT connectivity

The Arduino MKR WiFi 1010 provides a WiFi module, the WiFi U-BLOX NINA-W10 Series Low Power 2.4GHz. It supports the protocol 802.11 b/g/n and also provides Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE).

Security

The board comes with a crypto chip that enables SHA-256 secure connections, the ATECC508.

Li-Po charging circuit

When charging the board through the Micro-USB port, the Arduino MKR WiFi 1010 can charge an external battery through its Li-Po charging circuit.

The battery needs to be a Li-Po Single Cell, 3.7V, 700mAh minimum.

When the USB power is disconnected, the device will switch to the external battery automatically.

Price

On the price side, the Arduino MKR WiFi 1010 is more expensive than an Arduino Uno Rev3 board, but less expensive than an Arduino Uno WiFi Rev2.

On the official Arduino store, at the time of writing:

the Arduino MKR WiFi 1010 is €29.90
the Arduino Uno rev3 is €20.00
the Arduino Uno WiFi rev2 is €38.90

If we consider the Arduino Uno Rev3 board lacks WiFi / Bluetooth connectivity, it’s not really on the same level - that’s not an IoT device.

Top view of Arduino MKR WiFi 1010 board displaying the Arduino logo, pin labels, and compact form factor on wood surface

So we can say the Arduino MKR WiFi 1010 is €9 cheaper than its Uno IoT counterpart, Arduino Uno WiFi rev2, which can be considered its educational counterpart.

Tagged: Arduino · All topics

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