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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

#101

Post by TheCapn »

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?

Personal uses of Pi/Arduino:

- Garage opener/security (door sensing / camera & push notificaitons to cellphone) (Pi)

- 2-axis solar tracker with manual control & wind speed sensing (Arduino)

- Home VPN Server (Pi)

- Sump water level monitor (Pi)

- Industrial temperature cable sensing and reporting device for reading from ~140 cables (http://www.advancedgrainmanagement.com/products/temperature-...) (Pi)

So as others have said, if you have the ability to do it you're limited by what you can imagine. If you treat the output in the same way you would any industrial automation you're virtually only limited by what you can imagine you want to do with the device. I've set up a Pi as a home media server (though that's extremely common). I've got a friend using Pi for underground sprinkler control.

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

#103

Post by zxcvvcxz »

herbst wrote: post #2

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

Yep. I have no qualms paying $3.50 for a near-identical product that normally costs $27+tax. I'll take 10 please!

Open source projects push our development capabilities forward, and price competition is just another way it does this.

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

#104

Post by Karunamon »

azdle wrote: post #32
Karunamon wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

A rackmount server can control some RGB LEDs, if wired correctly. That doesn't mean a rackmount server is in the same category as a Pi.

Furthermore, most people using Pis and Ardunios are hobbyists who are necessarily familiar with the raw technical implementation and are choosing the product based on that technical data.

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

#105

Post by pjc50 »

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?

Arduino (the platform) has been to amateur electronics what BASIC was to home computing in the '80s. It's the platform with a user community and a huge number of example projects, that lets people learn easily with early results and a minimum of time and cost investment.

The toy projects are a journey, not a destination. Compare them to all those people typing in listings for Breakout games in the '80s computer magazines.

It's also a means of doing "IoT" home automation and monitoring without getting locked into someone else's surveillance ecosystem. I have a Raspberry Pi reading my electricity meter, for example.

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

#106

Post by alex_hitchins »

johnsea wrote: post #102

If this [untold Arduino history]( http://arduinohistory.github.io/ ) link is true, it seems like Massimo Banzi is not only difficult to do business with but that he had a very particular way to give credit. Better buy clones...

I was going to post the same link. I have no qualms buying clones what so ever since reading this story. I've had several now and there have been no issues with quality or stability. Not even been hit with any fake FDTI chips either.

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

#108

Post by mkarr »

ohitsdom wrote: post #99
SEJeff wrote: post #66

I really don't see the point of the arduinos when you can buy an esp8266 that is arduino compatible (you can use the arduino IDE and sketches). 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…

I don't understand the comments that ESP8266's can replace Arduinos. Don't you still need to wire the ESP8266 to a microcontroller? I'm a hardware novice, and I love Arduinos. I'd appreciate any info to help me learn, seems like I'm missing something. To me the ESP8266 is a superior alternative to Arduino wifi shields, not the Arduino itself.

When the ESP8266s were first introduced, they came with a closed firmware that simply responded to AT commands over a serial port. To do anything with the chip, you had to have another micro controlling it.

However, sometime after the hobbyist/maker market started to take notice of the devices, an SDK was released, allowing for code to be run natively on the devices without a separate micro.

Nowadays, there are multiple options for running code on the devices. You can do it natively via C/C++ with the SDK, or you can try out one of the other firmwares that various parties have produced, like NodeMCU (Lua) or MicroPython.

The chips are actually pretty damn powerful compared to the Atmega series micros used with the classic Arduinos. And cheap too. You can get a NodeMCU module that already has a voltage reg. and USB->UART controller on it for around $3. Very hard to beat.

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

#109

Post by voidz »

pjc50 wrote: post #105
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?

Arduino (the platform) has been to amateur electronics what BASIC was to home computing in the '80s. It's the platform with a user community and a huge number of example projects, that lets people learn easily with early results and a minimum of time and cost investment. The toy projects are a journey, not a destination. Compare them to all those people typing in listings for Breakout games in the '80s computer magaz…

How does it read your electricity meter?

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

#110

Post by azdle »

Karunamon wrote: post #104
azdle wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

A rackmount server can control some RGB LEDs, if wired correctly. That doesn't mean a rackmount server is in the same category as a Pi. Furthermore, most people using Pis and Ardunios are hobbyists who are necessarily familiar with the raw technical implementation and are choosing the product based on that technical data.

Yeah, but if a rack-mount server was cheaper, easier to use, about the same size, and used a reasonable amount of power compared to an Arduino, I'd probably use a rack-mount server for all my DIY projects.
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