In a presentation at the Maker Faire held in Rome this weekend Arduino co-founder Massimo Banzi gave a preview of the soon to be released Gemma wearable Arduino board. The 27 mm diameter board contains an ATtiny85 processor programmable from the Arduino IDE via Gemma’s micro USB connector. The design is a collaborative effort together with Adafruit Industries who also worked on the Arduino Micro.

The ATtiny85 has 8K of flash and 5 I/O pins, including analog inputs and PWM outputs. It was designed with a USB bootloader so you can plug it into any computer and reprogram it over a USB port (it uses 2 of the 5 I/O pins, leaving you with 3). Ideal for small & simple projects sewn with conductive thread, the Arduino Gemma fits the needs of most of entry-level wearable creations including reading sensors and driving addressable LED pixels.

Key features of the Gemma:

Microcontroller: ATtiny85
Operating Voltage: 3.3 V
Input Voltage (recommended): 4-16 V via battery port
Input Voltage (limits): 3-18 V
Digital I/O Pins: 3
PWM Channels: 2
Analog Input Channels: 1
DC Current per I/O Pin: 40 mA
DC Current for 3.3 V Pin: 150 mA
Flash Memory: 8 KB (ATtiny85) of which 2.5 KB used by bootloader
SRAM: 0.5 KB (ATtiny85)
EEPROM: 0.5 KB (ATtiny85)
Clock Speed: 8 MHz
MicroUSB for USB Bootloader
JST 2-PH for external battery

Arduino Gemma will be available for purchase on the Arduino Store and Adafruit Industries starting late autumn 2014.