Arduino Gets Into Software-Defined Vehicles with the Upcoming E/E Starter Kit
Developed in partnership with Bosch, ETAS, and DigiKey as part of the digital.auto initiative, the Portenta-powered dev kit launches soon.
Arduino has announced a partnership with Bosch, ETAS, and DigiKey to launch a development kit designed for those looking to experiment with software defined vehicle (SDV) systems: the E/E Starter Kit.
"The E/E Starter Kit delivers a modular and scalable SDV architecture, featuring a central compute unit and distributed zone controllers," Arduino explains of the bundle, developed as part of the collaborative digital.auto project. "This architecture supports real-time communication across multiple vehicle zones, providing a prototyping-grade development platform for SDV applications."
The E/E Starter Kit is made up of an Arduino Portenta X8, which forms the "Central Compute" block of the system, and two Arduino Portenta H7 boards as "Zone Controllers." The devices communicate over a high-speed real-time interconnect, and come with a pre-configured networking for integrated SDV-specific middleware — delivering, the company says, standardized vehicle data abstraction, hardware abstraction, and the claim of "seamless interoperability" with other SDV ecosystem components.
Using the Arduino E/E Starter Kit, Arduino claims, it's possible to get started experimenting with software defined vehicle systems immediately — promising that users can get set up "in minutes" and begin developing on top of the bundled sample app and middleware stack. Those looking for greater depth are then pointed towards the "digital.auto playground," for more advanced projects.
The Arduino E/E Starter Kit is available to order now, at an as-yet unconfirmed price point; at the time of writing, project partner DigiKey was listing parts for a similar kit with two Portenta H7 boards, three Portenta Hat Carrier boards, one Portenta X8, two Arduino UNO R4 Minima boards, one Arduino UNO R4 WiFi, a 0.96" OLED display, a Raspberry Pi 5 8GB, and suitable cables at $1,256.86. More information, and a sign-up form to request early access to the official kit, is available on the Arduino website.
