Intel® Galileo is a development board based on Intel x86 architecture; it was designed mostly for makers and complies with open source software and hardware licenses. If you are familiar with the Arduino boards, you'll find this board somewhat similar; the reason being this board was designed to be hardware and software compatible with the Arduino shield ecosystem. It combines Intel technology with support for Arduino shields and libraries. It is even possible to write code using the same Arduino development environment.

The expansion header is similar to the Arduino ones. It has 14 digital I/O pins (where six of them can be used as PWM), six analog inputs, a serial port, and an ICSP header. It supports shields operating at either 3.3 V or 5 V. A jumper on the board enables voltage translation at the I/O pins from 5 V to 3.3 V, and vice versa, providing compatibility with the Arduino shields.

Galileo runs over a very light open source Linux OS in its 8 MB flash memory. However, do take into consideration that Arduino is being emulated using Linux, and your code will be running in a separate process.

This board includes a 10/100 Ethernet connector port, and if you wish to use Wi-Fi, you can add a card to the Mini PCIe socket on the back side of the board.

The Galileo Gen 1 board and its components

Breaking down the board, you can find the following major components:

As you can see, this board is more suitable to work with sensors. The Arduino shield compatibility, familiar IDE, real-time clock and, possibility of using the PCI express connector are some of its best features.

Many makers found the 400 MHz processor a bit slow for their projects, mostly because of Arduino being emulated with Linux. Intel addressed the community issues, made some changes to the original board, and presented a new one named Galileo Gen 2.

Galileo Gen 2 is still powered by the same processor, but its performance has been considerably increased. The Arduino shields compatibility has also been improved with 12 GPIOs, now made fully native by being connected directly to the Quark X1000 SoC, and 12-bit PWM resolution allowing faster and smoother responses.

This board is a bit bigger than the original one, and the 3.5 mm serial port jack has been replaced by a six-pin 3.3 V USB TTL UART header, now making it compatible with the standard FTDI to USB serial cable. Also, the USB host port was replaced with a full size Type A receptacle 2.0 USB port.

The power regulation system has been changed to accept power supplies from 7 V to 15 V. The power supply jack isn't the only powering option available; it is now possible to power this board through the Ethernet cable by connecting it to a Power over Ethernet (PoE)-enabled Ethernet switch. It is also possible to power it from a connected shield, as long as the input voltage applied to the Galileo's VIN pin is in the 7 V – 15 V range:

Intel Galileo Gen 2 board

For the demos in this book, you can either use Galileo or Galileo Gen 2. The projects will run on both.

Along with Galileo, Raspberry Pi and Arduino Yún are very popular boards among makers. All of them are Linux-embedded and have open source hardware design.

The following is a table with some features of each board:

Here's the brief comparison of the boards:

Galileo is compatible with Arduino in the way that it can run 3.3 and 5 V shields, but it has some restrictions because of the Arduino's AVR libraries dependencies. Before buying a shield, you should check whether it is supported by Galileo.

Some of the advantages of the Galileo board when compared to the mentioned ones are the possibilities of working with PCI Express mini cards and using a real-time clock. Besides these, Galileo comes fully ready to work with sensors; this makes it an interesting tool for data collection.

Like the Raspberry Pi, the possibility of booting from a stronger Linux image makes it possible for projects developed in some of the most popular languages such as Python or Node.js (Javascript).

Galileo is a good option if you have a project requiring sensors, monitoring, or device control. It is an interesting board to develop ambitious projects in the scope of the Internet of Things, where you can develop your unique Things and make them share data with each other.

In this chapter, you've learned about the IoT concept, your board components, and where you should connect what. By now, you may already be able to imagine what you are able to use and connect to your board.

In the next chapter, you'll get familiar with the Arduino development environment, learning how you can develop code and run it in your Galileo.