Why we won't be selling Genuino or Arduino any more • Hacker News Board

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

#121

Post by PeanutNore » Thu, Aug 11, 2016, 4:01 PM UTC

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 wired my own custom board for it rather than using a commercial Arduino type board, but I built a guitar effects pedal that runs Arduino code to process a guitar signal using the built in ADC and a pretty basic passive DAC. It works great for effects like bitcrushing, distortion, compression, and I'm trying to get high and low pass filters working on it but haven't made any progress lately.

Schematic and code: https://github.com/PeanutNore/guitarduino

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

#122

Post by jlewallen » Thu, Aug 11, 2016, 4:01 PM UTC

FuNe wrote: post #55

Kadin wrote: post #36

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.

I've been working on a project that's using Adafruit's Feather line extensively and I've been very happy. The ones with the M0 chip are great to work with. Edit: They're using ATSAMD21G18

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

#123

Post by pjc50 » Thu, Aug 11, 2016, 4:06 PM UTC

voidz wrote: post #109

pjc50 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I implemented this project: https://github.com/pjc50/emon-server

The meter has a (standardised) red LED that flashes once for each watt-hour. The Pi has a phototransistor that turns flashes into a GPIO transition interrupt. I've put it on my solar panel generation meter, and plan to build another (slightly improved) unit to monitor the mains input meter.

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

#124

Post by squeaky-clean » Thu, Aug 11, 2016, 4:06 PM UTC

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 "the next big thing." Not everything needs to be. I'm making a synthesizer with the Arduino Due (and Teensy which is compatible). It's a fun playground for things I would never normally get to do in C++ and asm. I've never gotten to code on a platform with true realtime and no OS restrictions before. Also the barrier to entry is so low, it makes it so much fun. WIthin less than 15 minutes of receiving my Amazon package I had my my first blinking LED working.

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

#125

Post by manyxcxi » Thu, Aug 11, 2016, 4:07 PM UTC

mr337 wrote: post #21

VMG wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any recommendations?

Any of them, I've been using everything from teensy,nano, and rebranded Uno. So far they have all worked like a charm and at a steep price reduction. Example, 5 nanos for $15 from Amazon [1]. [1] - https://www.amazon.com/XCSOURCE-ATmega328P-Controller-Arduin...

Yeah, I've not really had a problem with off-label Arduino chips/boards whenever I've ordered them either, except for one being DOA and another having an I/O pin that just wasn't connected somewhere along the way inside the microcontroller.

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

#126

Post by whamlastxmas » Thu, Aug 11, 2016, 4:09 PM UTC

manyxcxi wrote: post #83

Mister_Snuggles wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ESP8266 [0] is, in my mind, one of the most interesting things in the microcontroller world right now. It's cheap, small, easy to use, and connects to WiFi. 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 ca…

I'm linking to the SparkFun ESP8266 breakout [0] because I found this to be so much easier to get my bearings with than the raw chips/breakouts I'd gotten from Alibaba. Granted, I got my hands on them very early and they were still reverse engineering the documentation on them, but using this dev board has saved me many hours. It's also quite inexpensive for one or two if you're just trying to play around. [0] https:…

Can also get a WeMos D1 mini on AliExpress for $4 which is essentially the same thing but much smaller, and has lots of shields available.

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

#127

Post by pat_space » Thu, Aug 11, 2016, 4:11 PM UTC

timlyo wrote: post #81

manyxcxi wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they're much friendlier to get started for the novice, most of the widespread examples seem extremely trivial to someone with experience. 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 r…

>A USB nerf gun that shoots at the developer who broke the Jenkins build Anywhere I can read any more about this?

Please!

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

#128

Post by the_af » Thu, Aug 11, 2016, 4:12 PM UTC

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?

Apparently the Arduino is part of some DIY 3D printers. I'd say that is a big deal!

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

#129

Post by ayuvar » Thu, Aug 11, 2016, 4:14 PM UTC

manyxcxi wrote: post #90

timlyo wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>A USB nerf gun that shoots at the developer who broke the Jenkins build Anywhere I can read any more about this?

I always mean to write up my projects but never do. The gist is really, through trial and error I was able to map developer's desks to coordinates and elevation angles to get to their seat and just made a flat file that had their username, X, Y, and Z values in it. The main loop was just the standard socket server you'd find in a Ethernet module example and I wrote a Jenkins plugin that would connect on break and sen…

You probably could have done some basic artillery calculations.

Then again, you might work in one of those weird offices where trying to measure the distance from your desk to theirs is more awkward than repeatedly attempting to shoot your coworkers while you fine-tuned the numbers.

Neat project!

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

#130

Post by nfriedly » Thu, Aug 11, 2016, 4:14 PM UTC

soapdog wrote: post #87

douche wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RaspPis are startlingly cheap these days, and surprisingly capable. For less than a tank of gas, I just built a retro ROM console, and the new version 3 boards are beefy enough to run video through Kodi without missing a beat or play any old console games I've tried up through the PS1/N64 era.

That is not true to all countries and regions. For example, in Brazil a raspberry pi 3 will cost a bit more than USD 100 which is a lot of money for many people and prevent it from being acquired by low and middle income classes which are arguably among the ones that would most benefit from access to this ecosystem. Arduino/Genuinos on the other hand are easily available on our version of eBay and can be purchased as…

Yikes! Is that because the main distributors (RS/Allied Electronics/Newark) charge more to ship it to Brazil, or do they just not ship there at all and make you purchase through more expensive re-sellers? (Or is it something else like tariffs?)