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Arduino Goes Pro at CES 2020

blog.arduino.cc

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Re: Arduino Goes Pro at CES 2020

#91

Post by jschwartzi »

magicalhippo wrote: post #53
3fe9a03ccd14ca5 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the vast majority of these iot applications are something like “read; send; sleep 60”. But your point stands that people needing high precision and timing probably won’t reach for this.

That's the point of having the M4 cores alongside the M7 though, isn't it? Let the M4's handle real-time stuff like driving motors, and the M7 do communication and/or user interface.

Do they share a memory bus? How do they contend with devices? Can an interrupt or memory access on the M7 core cause the M4 core to miss a critical timing? If so it's not really a good design.

If it's two totally independent cores with totally independent sets of devices, how do you manage the pinmux? Are there independent pinmuxes?

And finally is the M4 core capable of detecting single-faults in the cache, memory, flash registers, and instruction pipeline? Such as might be caused by cosmic rays?

These are some things I would look for if I was specifying a processor pair for use in a safety-critical system.

Re: Arduino Goes Pro at CES 2020

#92

Post by mdszy »

dragontamer wrote: post #85
mdszy wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the choice of language is because it's beginner-friendly, and the use-case is industrial hardware, then the choice is only being made so the company doesn't have to pay professional-level salaries.

Can the same hardware not be used for both industrial, and beginner-friendly settings? Some of the biggest successes are because beginner-friendly kits were delivered to universities. Linux and Unix are a great example of this: students taught in Linux / Unix environments (even using "toy" languages like Python) end up growing into professionals who... still use Linux. One of the most important business moves for a "…

>Can the same hardware not be used for both industrial, and beginner-friendly settings?

Sorry but, if you have to ask this question, it's pretty clear that you have no idea what many industrial settings require.

There are ruggedness requirements, stability requirements, longevity requirements...

I work in an industry where our products are used for LITERAL decades. There's no way that anything even remotely marketed as "beginner friendly" could begin to work for anything we do.

You can't just throw more hardware at a problem and use that as an excuse for shitty software, come on. This incredibly flawed logic is why the minimum requirements for a chat program include 32GB of RAM.

Re: Arduino Goes Pro at CES 2020

#93

Post by Moru »

bazooka_penguin wrote: post #10
starik36 wrote: post #4

Not trying to troll - just don't know. Why would anybody use an Arduino versus a five dollar Raspberry Pi Zero?

Arduino is a microcontroller, made for realtime. Like a stepper motor vs a normal DC motor

Or to buy a car when all you need is a wheel.

Re: Arduino Goes Pro at CES 2020

#94

Post by dragontamer »

mdszy wrote: post #92
dragontamer wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can the same hardware not be used for both industrial, and beginner-friendly settings? Some of the biggest successes are because beginner-friendly kits were delivered to universities. Linux and Unix are a great example of this: students taught in Linux / Unix environments (even using "toy" languages like Python) end up growing into professionals who... still use Linux. One of the most important business moves for a "…

>Can the same hardware not be used for both industrial, and beginner-friendly settings? Sorry but, if you have to ask this question, it's pretty clear that you have no idea what many industrial settings require. There are ruggedness requirements, stability requirements, longevity requirements... I work in an industry where our products are used for LITERAL decades. There's no way that anything even remotely marketed…

> I work in an industry where our products are used for LITERAL decades. There's no way that anything even remotely marketed as "beginner friendly" could begin to work for anything we do.

Beginner friendly doesn't mean that the other requirements disappear.

The Arduino can run Javascript. Sure, you don't have to make it use Javascript, but it can be done. Just because Arduino runs Javascript doesn't change its -40C to +85C operating temperature.

Arduino can be BOTH beginner friendly, AND rugged enough to operate at sub-zero temperatures indefinitely. And if you really want to "remove Javascript" from your stack, then you're 100% welcome to do that.

Universities on the other hand, have other requirements. Beginner friendly is absolutely a necessity for students. You have to hook students with something easy if you want the students to be interested in projects. Having a SINGLE platform scale from beginner usage, all the way up to professional usage, is extremely important for the general ecosystem.

And I still argue that opening up Javascript developers onto the platform is a good thing. UI design is complicated, and someone who fully focuses on the user-experience, culture, and presentation is useful. (Even if a GUI designer is ignorant of embedded issues, they can remain helpful in other ways).

Re: Arduino Goes Pro at CES 2020

#95

Post by Moru »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #60
freehunter wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again I'd have to ask you to explain the difference. If the differentiator is price, then why doesn't the richest man in the world have the most expensive one? It seems to me that if the richest man in the world drives an inexpensive car, then the more expensive car is worthless. And then to use the analogy, the more expensive Arduino is likewise worthless?

The reason I liked your answer is that it shows that the selection of Arduino vs Pi or Mercedes-Benz vs Hyundai is "application dependent." Ultimately they're both computing platforms used for control purposes. In some cases, the predictable I/O performance of the Arduino is an advantage over the Pi. In others it's not. In some cases, the built-in network access, CPU speed, UI capability of the Pi is an advantage, in…

The Pi is commonly used as a media center, the Arduino is used for prototyping your next invention. :-)

Re: Arduino Goes Pro at CES 2020

#96

Post by jschwartzi »

Karunamon wrote: post #71
dragontamer wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ADC, DAC, and 2.95uA timers. Can your Rasp. Pi Zero sleep at micro-amp currents, and self-wakeup 5 hours from now to perform some task, and go back to sleep? The specs here for this Arduino are downright ridiculous for low-power applications. We're talking about using 3x AA batteries for MONTHS. (3x NiMH AA will be 3.6V with 2000 mA-hrs. Using 3uA is 600,000 hours of battery, or 25,000 days of charge. You'll "only" l…

Great comment! I wonder if the newer low-self-discharge batteries might get you even more lengthy usage times. Something like a gen 2 Eneloop lite can hold onto 60% of its capacity after five years[1], which is just plain insane . [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eneloop#AA_size

If this is true, this makes possible a lot of very-low-power wireless applications where longevity is important. I'm recalling a project at my first job where we were using e-paper and CR2032s with wireless transceivers to create electronic shelf labels.

Longevity is important in this application because replacing batteries is very labor-intensive.

Re: Arduino Goes Pro at CES 2020

#97

Post by petra »

LeonM wrote: post #8
starik36 wrote: post #4

Not trying to troll - just don't know. Why would anybody use an Arduino versus a five dollar Raspberry Pi Zero?

In an industrial environment price is usually less relevant, or even irrelevant. Reliability is key here. Downtime of a machine can quickly rack up huge costs, so you want to spend extra on hardware that can resist greater temperature ranges, vibration, radiation, magnetism, moisture, etc.

Reliability is key.

But is the quality of the Arduino software/libraries good enough ?

Re: Arduino Goes Pro at CES 2020

#98

Post by whalesalad »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #81
whalesalad wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been extremely pleased with the Nerves project. It's Elixir (or any flavor of Erlang, really) top to bottom. The toolkit will build and flash the SD card, so you don't need to worry about anything except your app. Very nice to be able to ssh to my Pi and get dropped immediately into an IEX repl (no auth, no command prompt, it's just IEX over SSH)

Is nerves running without an OS on the Pi (baremetal)?

It's running on Linux. I am not privy to the specifics.

Re: Arduino Goes Pro at CES 2020

#99

Post by adammunich »

mochomocha wrote: post #70
mochomocha wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... In theory, if you could debug your code. The debugging capabilities on Arduino boards are unfortunately basically inexistent compared to traditional MCU dev boards. Hardware is great I agree though.

Which in my opinion makes the "goes pro" statement misleading. Without proper JTAG/SWD debugging functionalities, how do you program anything serious on Arduino?

Write a makefile and use GDB I guess...

Re: Arduino Goes Pro at CES 2020

#100

Post by CamperBob2 »

mochomocha wrote: post #70
mochomocha wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... In theory, if you could debug your code. The debugging capabilities on Arduino boards are unfortunately basically inexistent compared to traditional MCU dev boards. Hardware is great I agree though.

Which in my opinion makes the "goes pro" statement misleading. Without proper JTAG/SWD debugging functionalities, how do you program anything serious on Arduino?

printf() FTW
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