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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

#111

Post by dejv »

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 built lab grade NIR spectrometer around Arduino. At least first two prototypes of it, then graduated to Teensy (32bits compatible board) and will use custom board for production.

The thing is: most of electronic projects needs some way to control things and it is great to take shortcuts. In my case all analog section was custom made to the point of 16bit ADC and used Arduino/Teensy as a way to react to clicks on button, transfer data to computer and stuff like that.

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

#112

Post by jldugger »

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?

You mean you're not using Arduino to grow weed with indoor hydroponics?

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

#113

Post by alex_hitchins »

dan1234 wrote: post #85
falcolas wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're missing the additional costs and logistics of separating out SKUs by country which are placed upon the reseller, simply for "branding" reasons.

It sounds like they were already buying both product variants and surely it shouldn’t be too hard to restrict certain SKUs to certain territories via a shipping rule in their ecommerce system? Shame they didn’t breakdown how many sales they get from the US (wouldn’t expect it to be many considering they’re UK based). Got them to the front page in any case…

Perhaps part of it is down to the fact they said the margins were slim already. It seems like even if it was trivial to facilitate separation or SKUs geographically it's just not worth having to work with a supplier with such restrictions.

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

#114

Post by Renaud »

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.

While it is saved as a wifi module with a basic serial interface to be controlled from, The ESP8266 actually has a powerful microcontroller that can now easily be programmed using the Arduino IDE (and other stacks).

There are different firmwares that allow programming in Lua, Basic, Javascript... or just compile directly from C/C++

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

#115

Post by seizethecheese »

dan1234 wrote: post #63
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’ve built a few ESP8266[0] (so not Ardunio but same space) based sensors and have them distributed throughout a building so we can see how changes in one part affect the temperature and humidity in other parts. 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. [0] https://en.wikipe…

Any tips for going from a project board to a PCB?

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

#117

Post by Washuu »

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 am working on a write up on a project for CAN bus messages to CCD bus messages for old Chrysler vehicles. A mixture of reverse engineering and vehicle bus interfacing.

Note: I am using a Teensy instead of an Arduino, but using the Teensyduino Arduino IDE plugin.

https://github.com/Alexia/CAN-CCD_bus

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

#118

Post by alex_hitchins »

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 think it's better, just different. There are things I'd use an Arduino clone for that wouldn't be achievable on an esp.

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

#119

Post by SEJeff »

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.

Nope, the esp8266 is a microcontroller featuring a 32-bit Tensilica Xtensa LX106 running at 80 MHz. It can be overclocked to 160 Mhz, but that sucks for power.

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

#120

Post by ghostly_s »

falcolas wrote: post #50

Dear Pimoroni, Please add a link to your store from your blog. Sincerely, everyone who might actually want to buy from you.

Almost universally, these company blogs are on a subdomain and have no obvious link back to the actual site. I don't get it.
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