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Why we won't be selling Genuino or Arduino any more

blog.pimoroni.com

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Re: Why we won't be selling Genuino or Arduino any more

#31

Post by mr337 »

nathancahill wrote: post #28

Serious question: what are people building with these boards? The recurring projects I've seen are controlling lights, doors/locks and monitoring water in plants. I don't find these particularly compelling, am I missing something? How is this the next big thing?

From what I have seen a lot of ppl who wouldn't want to sit down and grok a datasheet [1]. The friction of getting started with one of these is soooo small, assuming the serial driver installs on Windows. Out of the box support on other systems.

[1] - http://www.atmel.com/Images/Atmel-42735-8-bit-AVR-Microcontr...

Re: Why we won't be selling Genuino or Arduino any more

#32

Post by azdle »

Karunamon wrote: post #16
azdle wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure they are. I mean, sure, you and I know the difference between an 8-bit micro with some friendly libraries and a 64-bit ARM SOC running a full OS. But for a lot of stuff they accomplish the exact same thing. So why not compare them by what most people do with them rather than their raw technical specs.

No, they are not. One has more in common with a FPGA, the other is literally a Linux computer. Different complexity, different skillset, different use case. ..Unless you're talking about something like the Arduino Yun, which actually runs a Linux OS. But as an example, you're probably not going to build a wifi security camera on the original device.

Yeah, but you're still talking about the raw technical implementation of how they work.

All I'm trying to say is that for the vast majority of users a raspberry pi can do anything that an arduino can. Sure you might not be able to so some super tight real-time stuff that you could do with hand-rolled asm that you could do on an arduino, but at that point you're more at the level of 'using an AVR' than 'using Arduino'.

When the problem is "I want to control some RGB LEDs" or something, either can be used. That means that they are of the same category.

Re: Why we won't be selling Genuino or Arduino any more

#33

Post by StavrosK »

nathancahill wrote: post #28

Serious question: what are people building with these boards? The recurring projects I've seen are controlling lights, doors/locks and monitoring water in plants. I don't find these particularly compelling, am I missing something? How is this the next big thing?

The compelling thing about them is that they're a gateway into hardware design. It's like asking "what serious apps have people made with Scratch?", it's rather missing the point. You start making a rotary mobile phone with Arduino and move on to make your own autonomous drone.

Re: Why we won't be selling Genuino or Arduino any more

#34

Post by jonlucc »

nathancahill wrote: post #28

Serious question: what are people building with these boards? The recurring projects I've seen are controlling lights, doors/locks and monitoring water in plants. I don't find these particularly compelling, am I missing something? How is this the next big thing?

It's not the next big thing, so much as the next big educational thing, in my opinion. It is a simple enough system to put electronic power in the hands of people who wouldn't otherwise have it. They learn some basics of coding, some basics of electricity, and get something tangible out of it.

Re: Why we won't be selling Genuino or Arduino any more

#35

Post by laurent123456 »

nathancahill wrote: post #28

Serious question: what are people building with these boards? The recurring projects I've seen are controlling lights, doors/locks and monitoring water in plants. I don't find these particularly compelling, am I missing something? How is this the next big thing?

I don't think it's really a "big thing", it's mostly for hobbyist projects (since you need to know quite a bit about software development, Linux, etc.), and for that purpose it's quite good.

It's cheap and you can easily connect leds, motors, etc. and control them via Python scripts. It's also frequently used to create home entertainment units for music, films or video games (emulators in particular), since there's an HDMI port that you can connect to your TV.

Re: Why we won't be selling Genuino or Arduino any more

#36

Post by Kadin »

nathancahill wrote: post #28

Serious question: what are people building with these boards? The recurring projects I've seen are controlling lights, doors/locks and monitoring water in plants. I don't find these particularly compelling, am I missing something? How is this the next big thing?

It's not "the next big thing", as much as it's a lot of little things. There's always been a gap between software and the physical world; the Arduino lets people easily bridge that gap. Though the typical projects are trivial as you suggest, the effect of being able to easily construct such projects is significant.

That said, I think there are other MCs aside from the Arduino that are more interesting today, because they have WiFi or Ethernet on-board, and you get into a much more interesting class of project when you add networking as a core feature rather than something that needs to be bolted on.

Re: Why we won't be selling Genuino or Arduino any more

#37

Post by minsight »

VMG wrote: post #11
herbst wrote: post #2

Cool. Now i can buy the cheap offbrand clones from Aliexpress without thinking i should have supported the actual creators.

Any recommendations?

Robotdyn is a great vendor. Their stuff is well built (and designed), not as cheap as the other aliexpress stuff, but far cheaper than the name brand.

Re: Why we won't be selling Genuino or Arduino any more

#38

Post by Kadin »

xchip wrote: post #29

Why do you want an Arduino when the ESP8266 is half the price and has WIFI?

More analog pins, is the only compelling reason I can come up with. In general I think the ESP is a better choice for most "turn the LEDs on and off" type of project though.

Re: Why we won't be selling Genuino or Arduino any more

#39

Post by nfriedly »

nathancahill wrote: post #28

Serious question: what are people building with these boards? The recurring projects I've seen are controlling lights, doors/locks and monitoring water in plants. I don't find these particularly compelling, am I missing something? How is this the next big thing?

I used one to control a pair of candy machines for a Watson demo - there was a laptop with a microphone that did sentiment analysis on your speech, and then it told the Arduinos to give you either sweet or sour candy.

The next version is probably going to have a Raspberry Pi replace both the laptop and the Arduinos, but they were a good starting point to get the project up and running.

Re: Why we won't be selling Genuino or Arduino any more

#40

Post by utexaspunk »

laurent123456 wrote: post #35
nathancahill wrote: post #28

Serious question: what are people building with these boards? The recurring projects I've seen are controlling lights, doors/locks and monitoring water in plants. I don't find these particularly compelling, am I missing something? How is this the next big thing?

I don't think it's really a "big thing", it's mostly for hobbyist projects (since you need to know quite a bit about software development, Linux, etc.), and for that purpose it's quite good. It's cheap and you can easily connect leds, motors, etc. and control them via Python scripts. It's also frequently used to create home entertainment units for music, films or video games (emulators in particular), since there's a…

Arduinos do not have HDMI ports. You're thinking of a Raspberry Pi
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