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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

#141

Post by Retr0spectrum »

herbst wrote: post #18
VMG wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any recommendations?

I bought like 2 of them so far and they both were exactly as expected. The only thing to note is that you should try to find those with CPUs (are those CPUs?) similar to the ones from the original designs. Some (the super cheap ones, < $1) often are identical by design but come with some crappy CPU

Almost all the ones I've seen have used the atmega328P. You might see some slightly different models with different amounts of ROM and RAM, but most people would probably never notice the difference. If you need more than a few KB of RAM/ROM, you should probably be getting something STM32 based instead.

What does change is the Serial > USB converters that they use. The more expensive ones (>£3) tend to use FTDI chips, whereas the cheap ones use a CH340G or a similar part.

On some platforms you may have to install drivers to make these cheaper converters work, but they were just plug-and-play for me on Linux.

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

#142

Post by herbst »

ghostly_s wrote: post #120
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.

Pssshh. Dont tell them, we can use the SEO benefit for ourself if nobody knows.

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

#143

Post by squeaky-clean »

PeanutNore wrote: post #121
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: http…

This is really cool, I'm doing something similar! I'm making synthesizers with the Uno and Due; I haven't tried doing anything with audio input yet, but want to play with that as well. How is the sound quality of it? I did the 8-bit resistor ladder DAC from the instructable linked, but quickly broke the layout when I tried to bring it to a friend's house and haven't tried putting the breadboard back together. I really should go back to that, I liked how crappy it sounded. I also tried making a 1-bit DAC out of it, which worked better than I expected (though it still wasn't good, I just didn't expect anything haha).

Now I'm using the Due and Teensy (Cortex M3 / M4) because of the hardware DAC and 32 bit processor. I haven't gotten filters working yet either, they are my next goal. IIR first, and then FIR if the Due can handle it. But I have gotten a cool resonant filter simulation by using a hard-sync as described here [0]. You get some neat variations by changing the waveshapes used and the windowing function. I might not even have subtractive filters in my final design, just because of how cool it sounds to approach it differently, but I still want to understand how to implement them.

Nothing on Github to share at the moment, unfortunately. I'm too embarassed by the state of the code, lol. But I will be checking out your project this weekend, so thanks for sharing!

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_distortion_synthesis#Sim...

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

#144

Post by jdietrich »

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.

For a similar market, the ARM Mbed platform is very compelling. You can program a wide range of ARM-based development boards from a browser-based IDE. They provide an Apache-licensed RTOS with comprehensive hardware support. There is an enormous range of compatible hardware, from 16MHz M0 up to 400MHz A9.

https://www.mbed.com/en/

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

#145

Post by herbst »

mk7 wrote: post #19
lightbyte wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're comparing a microcontroller (Arudino) with a computer (pi). They aren't the same thing.

But if real CPU computer is cheaper than the microcontroller, you may start comparing it... :-)

Except you want that thing to run on battery, or act in near real time.

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

#146

Post by elcct »

soapdog wrote: post #91
VMG wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any recommendations?

My recommendation is a bit different, instead of that, try looking for a local manufacturer and support them. Here in Brazil, people go for the cheap aliexpress clones to the point where some of our own manufacturers are closing shop. In these cases, strengthening the local ecosystem might be interesting and wiser in the long run.

Why? Your manufacturers could focus on something more profitable. What's the point in making another Arduino like board? Supporting non innovative shops is not good in short and long run.

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

#147

Post by uola »

michaelt wrote: post #84
jklinger410 wrote: post #30

TLDR: Reseller is pissed that "Genuino" has to be sold as "Arduino" in the US and that they have separate SKUs. Also Genuino seems to have poor B2B/reseller support. Is this post really that petty or am I missing something?

The new requirements make providing a good customer experience much more difficult, because it passes the retailers the burden of explaining this bullshit no-one cares about to their customers. For example, what if I visit the shop while logged out, put a Genuino into my basket, then log in and ask for delivery to a US address - should the website replace the Genuino in my basket with an Arduino? What if Arduinos are…

Providing customer service is what a retailer does. It's fine not to want to sell something, but writing rants in response (especially when you suggest your own products instead) isn't very nice. Retailers also take quite a big piece of the pie from smaller manufacturers.

(As far as I understand) Arduino LLC only has the trademark for Arduino in the US, meaning they can only sell and manufacture them in the US. It seems reasonable that Arduino LLC don't compete with their own US manufacturers by selling (under license) Chinese made Genuinos in the US.

People always say they want open source, support, locally manufactured products etc. but then they seem to take pretty much any excuse possible not to support it.

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

#148

Post by rawfan »

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?

Depending on what your trade is, you often need prototypes of things that do stuff. Before Arduino is usually cost thousands of dollars to make these (only counting the hardware cost). Arduino drove that price down to a fraction. It's easy to develop pretty much everything in very little time.

Here are couple rather uncommon examples:

  - a greeting card with an integrated mobile baseband that calls a certain number once opened ("hey grandma!")
  - a tea-timer that automatically pulls out the teabag after a set amount of time
  - a UV-dosimeter that measures the actual amount of UV exposure and connects to your smartphone to track the data and warn of potential damage (with respect to your skin-type).
  - the DIY-cellphone by David Mellis modified to display reading from arbitrary sensors
Your imagination is the limit. ;)

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

#150

Post by detaro »

st3v3r wrote: post #149

I'm sorry, but I don't buy it. Other stores, like Sparkfun, are quite able to do this.

You don't buy what? They didn't claim that it's impossible to deal with it, just that they won't.

And looking at Sparkfun's site, I see how stupid this is. For one model, both are available: 2 SKUs for technically the same board, one is out of stock. And a notice that buying either might be delayed for a few days due to address verification. Very consumer-friendly.

All others they sell as Ardunios only, and they either make them themselves (and license the US trademark) or buy from the european company, so they mostly sidestep the issue.

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