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

#231

Post by manyxcxi » Thu, Aug 11, 2016, 11:34 PM UTC

centrinoblue wrote: post #205

win_ini wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar to the nerd question - could you describe your approach to the freezer monitor? I have a cabin I don't live nearby to, and I basically can't keep anything in the freezer. It seems to go out often enough to unfreeze then refreeze the ice cube water. I was thinking a flat thermistor. Then I started thinking - what if it's not the power, but the freezer itself? Now I'm getting into a battery to log when power is…

I dabbled in designing a cooler/freezer monitoring setup for a local farmer not too long ago. The 2 biggest constraints I found were power and communication from within the freezer. One promising approach was - a BLE enabled temp. sensor beacon with a coin lion battery - a nearby externally mounted unit (RaspberryPi) plugged into a wall socket as a relay - a small central 'black box' SSD/Wifi/router ground-station to…

Depending on the freezer, putting a hole somewhere and sealing it up really well is just as good as the walls and insulation that were in there before. I did this to a chest freezer that wasn't terribly expensive and I haven't ever noticed that the outside of the hole is any cooler than surrounding areas, nor did I notice that it had to work any harder to keep it cool.

That being said, I didn't exactly exhaustively detail the before and after performance of the freezer either. I used the smallest drill bit possible that would let me get a probe in there and everything else is external of the freezer down by the compressor motor where there is a lot of extra room- and input power to tap in to.

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

#232

Post by seizethecheese » Thu, Aug 11, 2016, 11:51 PM UTC

dan1234 wrote: post #203

seizethecheese wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I used KiCad[0] PCB design software and followed a lot of Youtube tutorials. This[1] one was the best tutorial I found, it seems pretty trivial at first glance but touches on all the parts of the process. I use OSH Park for the actual PCB production[2], they're pretty cheap and good quality boards but be prepared for a bit of a wait. There's also a good price comparison site[3] for alternate suppliers. [0] http://kic…

Thanks!

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

#233

Post by icefox » Thu, Aug 11, 2016, 11:52 PM UTC

Obi_Juan_Kenobi wrote: post #222

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?

My practical-ish project: an advanced egg-timer. I looked for some time trying to find a good egg timer, but there are really just two options, and neither are that great. You can have a nice, intuitive analog interface (the classic dial timer), but you lack precision and many are very poorly constructed and unreliable (seriously, look at Amazon reviews for this type). There's also no way to fine-tune the alarm; some…

Could you build one that had a tilt sensor and would start counting up whenever it when off? If so I would buy it.

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

#234

Post by brokenmachine » Fri, Aug 12, 2016, 2:42 AM UTC

neltnerb wrote: post #134

FuNe wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"other MCs aside from the Arduino that are more interesting today" Can you give a few links? Thanks in advance.

I've entirely moved from Arduino to the Teensy, which is pretty much entirely software-compatible (excepting pin number changes), but uses an ARM Cortex M4 with 32-bit architecture at up to 96MHz on a much smaller board. The guy who makes them is also incredibly helpful on the support forums and constantly adding new features. The peripherals are so much better it's comical. Basically all pins capable of 16-bit PWM,…

Teensy is great but mostly overkill for the kinds of basic IOT stuff that I find myself doing.

I do want to do a project using a teensy with the audio board for beat detection eventually, but the teensy audio library still doesn't suppert beat detection. Paul posted that he would be adding it a couple of years ago I think, but it currently isn't implemented.

ESP8266 for ~$3 at 160MHz with wifi built-in is such a bargain I can't go past it most of the time, and when I don't need wifi and want to use the Arduino libraries, Arduino pro micros are about the same price and have USB HID support.

It's so great that there are so many great and well-documented options out there nowadays!

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

#235

Post by brokenmachine » Fri, Aug 12, 2016, 2:45 AM UTC

kordless wrote: post #72

anton_gogolev wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ESP8266[0] springs to mind: > The ESP8266 is a low-cost Wi-Fi chip with full TCP/IP stack and microcontroller capability... [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESP8266

I messed around with several versions of these and will say they are all sorts of a pain in the ass to get going. The Python stack I was using on them kept crashing when I would put it into power saver mode. Still, it's pretty cool you can buy one for like $2 and basically have a computer that runs Python with some minimal microcontroller functionality.

I think the software support has improved a lot since I first checked them out about a year ago.

I've only used the Arduino libraries, but I haven't had a problem yet.

Funny that a 160MHz board with wifi built-in can be referred to as "minimal microcontroller functionality" nowadays.

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

#236

Post by centrinoblue » Fri, Aug 12, 2016, 3:02 AM UTC

manyxcxi wrote: post #231

centrinoblue wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dabbled in designing a cooler/freezer monitoring setup for a local farmer not too long ago. The 2 biggest constraints I found were power and communication from within the freezer. One promising approach was - a BLE enabled temp. sensor beacon with a coin lion battery - a nearby externally mounted unit (RaspberryPi) plugged into a wall socket as a relay - a small central 'black box' SSD/Wifi/router ground-station to…

Depending on the freezer, putting a hole somewhere and sealing it up really well is just as good as the walls and insulation that were in there before. I did this to a chest freezer that wasn't terribly expensive and I haven't ever noticed that the outside of the hole is any cooler than surrounding areas, nor did I notice that it had to work any harder to keep it cool. That being said, I didn't exactly exhaustively d…

I was evaluating designs from a potential commercial opportunity perspective so keeping things non-invasive was considered a constraint for ease of use and to avoid warranty/liability risk.

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

#237

Post by dingo_bat » Fri, Aug 12, 2016, 3:18 AM UTC

lightbyte wrote: post #7

dingo_bat wrote: post #5

Bah! Arduino is way overpriced for the specs anyway. Raspberry pi and others are where it's at now. But I do think there is a massive power usage difference.

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

All the projects I did with arduino could have been done with the pi. Some even easier to code because I could have used python. So when a full microprocessor based PC is cheaper than a microcontroller why wouldn't you use the better option. Again, I know there are certain things a microcontroller excels at, but most people don't use their arduino for those things.

Now if the arduino was 10x cheaper, the entire value proposition and application space changes.

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

#238

Post by exhilaration » Fri, Aug 12, 2016, 4:31 AM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #123

voidz wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Very nice, I've got a modern electric meter but had no idea this was possible.

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

#239

Post by brokenmachine » Fri, Aug 12, 2016, 4:48 AM UTC

dan1234 wrote: post #203

seizethecheese wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I used KiCad[0] PCB design software and followed a lot of Youtube tutorials. This[1] one was the best tutorial I found, it seems pretty trivial at first glance but touches on all the parts of the process. I use OSH Park for the actual PCB production[2], they're pretty cheap and good quality boards but be prepared for a bit of a wait. There's also a good price comparison site[3] for alternate suppliers. [0] http://kic…

I started on KiCad but found the interface very unintuitive.

I got stuck at the point of making my own footprints for custom devices, which I needed to do because the library doesn't seem to include all that much (or maybe I couldn't find devices I was using because I couldn't work out the UI for searching well enough.

Might have another go at some stage.

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

#240

Post by manyxcxi » Fri, Aug 12, 2016, 4:52 AM UTC

centrinoblue wrote: post #236

manyxcxi wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on the freezer, putting a hole somewhere and sealing it up really well is just as good as the walls and insulation that were in there before. I did this to a chest freezer that wasn't terribly expensive and I haven't ever noticed that the outside of the hole is any cooler than surrounding areas, nor did I notice that it had to work any harder to keep it cool. That being said, I didn't exactly exhaustively d…

I was evaluating designs from a potential commercial opportunity perspective so keeping things non-invasive was considered a constraint for ease of use and to avoid warranty/liability risk.

Well then that makes a lot of sense for not wanting to put holes in it.