# Maple Reference Documentation

More recent/complete documentation of the IDE and the Maple hardware may be available at from the LeafLabs website.

Quickstart: Installation through blinky lights, real fast!

Installation: Step by step directions for each supported platform.

Hardware Devices:

- i2c (inter-integrated circuit bus, aka two-wire-interface or twi), a simple serial protocol for communications between digital devices.
- PWM (pulse width modulation) Sometimes confusingly referred to as "analog output" even though it's really digital.
- SPI, the serial peripheral interface, for high speed data transfer. Compatible with most SD cards.
- ADC (analog digital conversion), for reading in analog voltage levels.
- GPIO (general purpose input/output), the most basic digital on/off signaling on all of the header pins. Multiple modes such as pull-up, pull-down, floating, open-drain, etc.
- Timers, fast and flexible hardware counters that can be configured to trigger interrupts at regular intervals. They also underlie some of the other peripherals, such as PWM.
- USART (universal asynchronous receiver/transmitter), a generalized version of the classic RS232 serial bus, often used for communications with a terminal or personal computer.
- JTAG, a powerful special purpose shift register bus for debugging digital devices (eg reading out microcontroller register states and stepping instruction by instruction).
- USB (universal serial bus), the now ubiquitous connector/protocol solution for PC-peripheral communications. The Maple is usually programmed via USB and can communicate over it through either a serial emulation channel or as a general purpose device.

Language Documentation

Compatibility: A comparison of hardware and software differences between the Maple and Arduino boards, as well as advice for porting sketches and libraries.

Troubleshooting: For help debugging problems or unexpected behavior

Errata: A revision-by-revision list of hardware changes, errors, and failure modes.

Unix Toolchain Quickstart: An alternative to this all-in-one IDE.