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Any recommendations?
FastTech have some called "Arduino Compatible" they are indistinguishable from the original ones except for the text on them. I suspect they come from the same factory.
Q3. Are these actually original Arduino's, then?
A3. We can only officially answer we don't know.
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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…
"other MCs aside from the Arduino that are more interesting today" Can you give a few links? Thanks in advance.
> The ESP8266 is a low-cost Wi-Fi chip with full TCP/IP stack and microcontroller capability...
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?
They’re very cheap to build (we only use the project boards to prototype, final builds are on PCBs) and they can be run on small batteries when they’re just doing simple data collection.
My conclusion in all of this is to buy Teensy instead. Lovely thing.
So basically the Arduino the Software Company (IDE), and Arduino the hardware supplier broke ties? I use the ESP8266 which I do believe is an Arduino (Hardware) Killer. However, the Arduino IDE has amazing support for the ESP8266 among other hardware components. This isn't a bad thing, at least for consumers, since I feel like Arduino (the hardware) is a few cycles behind (eg. Particle, CHIP, bbc micro, pi zero, node…
You can get the bare esp8266 chips for $1-$2 from aliexpress, or buy a tricked out one from adafruit (the huzzah) for $9. They have a full wifi stack, support micropython, etc.
I think we're in a post-arduino age for microcontrollers. There are simply better options out there, of which the esp8266 is just one of the current better choices.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
"other MCs aside from the Arduino that are more interesting today" Can you give a few links? Thanks in advance.
If you go into real computers, the C.H.I.P.[1] is quite an interesting device. It's $9, which is price competitive with the ATMega644 chip (in single quantities), has WiFi, Bluetooth, and runs Linux. It's also got lots of GPIO, like the Raspberry Pi, so it can be used in places where a microcontroller might normally be used.
I'm sure there are others, but these are the two that are on my radar at the moment.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
"other MCs aside from the Arduino that are more interesting today" Can you give a few links? Thanks in advance.
Program in JavaScript, from a web IDE even. Wireless uploads to the board. $19.
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?
Now- I'm DEFINITELY not an expert, probably barely mediocre with the EE fundamentals, but I did take a lot of EE and some robotics at Uni to get my degree in Computer Engineering. I am nothing more than a hobbyist but some of my cooler projects have been:
- Autonomous 4WD robot
- Quadcopter
- A USB nerf gun that shoots at the developer who broke the Jenkins build
- Used an electronic photo frame as a display to show happy birthday tweets and Facebook posts to my wife from all the friends and family on her birthday
- WiFi/Proximity garage door opener (before they were cool)
- Garage freezer monitor (after an accidental unplug that spoiled a season's worth of salmon and elk)
- A vending machine that let you pay with your work badge from 'points' you earned (this involved a Raspbery Pi and a surface tablet as well, but the Arduino was what actually controlled the vending machine)
I've done a ton of random home automation IoT gizmos, mostly just for the fun of it, and a lot of robot builds for the boys. But the reason I use a lot of Arduino is that they are pretty friendly to use, there's a lot of help when I'm stuck, and I often don't need more. When I do, sometimes I just add another Arduino (or 4) and use serial or SPI communications between them. I've got some PIC chips for stuff, and some other random chips laying around, but I get more done quickly with the Arduino.
Now, if I ever got on to an idea I wanted to make more permanent I would look elsewhere, but for a hobby, everything else provides more friction and ramp up in the few hours a month I can free up to work on stuff.
EDIT: I'll add I've gotten some ESP8266 chips/breakouts that I've gotten more used to and I may start using them in a lot of places I've previously used Arduino + WiFi because the WiFi breakouts use a LOT of the available I/O and are usually the most expensive part of a build. I think I have 2 or 3 that I reuse.
My conclusion in all of this is to buy Teensy instead. Lovely thing.
Agree 100%. Paul provides incredible support and he's a real engineer. Teensy family are amazing little machines, and I've used them for many small side projects. The latest one was a custom fight stick. Paul even provides support you if you want to make your own version of teensy, once you're out of the prototype phase. Link: https://www.pjrc.com/teensy/
Lovely fella too when I bumped into him at BAMF.