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Arduino Goes Pro at CES 2020

blog.arduino.cc

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Re: Arduino Goes Pro at CES 2020

#151

Post by jb775 »

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?

I don't think it's anything to do with the price. I'd say there are three primary reasons (based on my personal experience using each):

1.) Pin control simplicity - Arduino's bread & butter is basic logic statements wrapped around pin signals (e.g. if pin #1 receives an inbound burst of electricity, tell pin #2 to send an outbound burst of electricity). Since most commercial processes are loops of very specific routines, this is all that's needed (not to mention it's easily scalable to massive operations).

2.) Battery backup - Raspberry Pi wasn't really designed to be powered by batteries, and voltage fluctuations lead to crashes. Also, since Raspberry Pi requires more power (than Arduino) to operate, it would eat battery life much faster.

3.) Startup consistency - When Arduino is powered on, it has a consistent startup that quickly loads your sketch. The restart behavior is predictable and downtime is minimal. With Raspberry Pi, you're dealing with an operating system starting up. This makes it much more cumbersome to get back to where it was prior to loss of power.

Re: Arduino Goes Pro at CES 2020

#152

Post by ClumsyPilot »

Zagitta wrote: post #137

In my opinion Arduino and "pro" does not belong in the same sentence. I work as an embedded software engineer who's tasked with ripping all the terrible arduino code out of a fairly large codebase where I work and the arduino core libraries are the lowest quality code I've ever had the displeasure of working with. It's full of awful decisions everywhere in the arduino core libraries such as defining min and max macro…

And yet Arduino has created an ecosystem of libraries, tutorials, blogs and communities that changed the industry. Now you can program dozens of chips with Arduino core, such as ESP8266/32, etc.

If it wasn't for arduino, many project would never take off.

At university I was taught to program microchip pic16 and oh boy was it painfull. Their software was low quality, errors were incomprehensible, etc.

I think Arduino is Javascript of embedded development: many people use it because it's easier, there is a library for everything and half of them don't work right.

Their i2C has had the same issue for like 8 years and last time i checked it still isn't fixed.

Re: Arduino Goes Pro at CES 2020

#153

Post by etaioinshrdlu »

Zagitta wrote: post #137

In my opinion Arduino and "pro" does not belong in the same sentence. I work as an embedded software engineer who's tasked with ripping all the terrible arduino code out of a fairly large codebase where I work and the arduino core libraries are the lowest quality code I've ever had the displeasure of working with. It's full of awful decisions everywhere in the arduino core libraries such as defining min and max macro…

The IDE is also spectacularly buggy, stagnant, and lacking so many needed features.

I'm not even sure to what to attribute arduino's success. I think they just made the simple things (GPIO and loading code to the device) simpler than anyone else. And even that is not done terribly well on an absolute scale. Think about how often new users encountered FTDI driver issues over time...

Re: Arduino Goes Pro at CES 2020

#154

Post by spookthesunset »

katmannthree wrote: post #25
vb6sp6 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you should stick with the language you know the best, especially if you are the one doing the coding.

I agree with that, but writing code for industrial applications is fundamentally different from whipping up a backend for the hottest new Lyft for Parrots startup. If industrial equipment malfunctions, people can be killed or horribly maimed. Industrial equipment needs to do exactly what it was designed to do 24/7 for years or decades in horrible (EMI, temperature, etc) environments.

> If industrial equipment malfunctions, people can be killed or horribly maimed.

In what way does C vs. python or javascript have any impact on this? If anything, C has way more ability to shoot yourself in the foot than python or javascript. Hell, what about a non memory-managed language like rust?

Like somebody else says, this feels more like a cultural issue than an actual technical issue.

Re: Arduino Goes Pro at CES 2020

#155

Post by spookthesunset »

magicalhippo wrote: post #55
embeddedpro wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm doing a hardware selection and after much consideration, I'm picking a 3$ esp8266. I don't see any purpose of Arduino outside education for kids. Makers should use cheaper products/knockoffs at worse.

The ESP8266 doesn't have hardware PWM, and only a single ADC channel, both which can make it unfit for a lot of tasks. That said, it does come with a lot of SRAM and the wifi/bt connectivity is obviously great.

> The ESP8266 doesn't have hardware PWM

There are actually hacky ways to work around that using DMA but yeah. Software PWM sucks.

Re: Arduino Goes Pro at CES 2020

#156

Post by captncraig »

etaioinshrdlu wrote: post #153
Zagitta wrote: post #137

In my opinion Arduino and "pro" does not belong in the same sentence. I work as an embedded software engineer who's tasked with ripping all the terrible arduino code out of a fairly large codebase where I work and the arduino core libraries are the lowest quality code I've ever had the displeasure of working with. It's full of awful decisions everywhere in the arduino core libraries such as defining min and max macro…

The IDE is also spectacularly buggy, stagnant, and lacking so many needed features. I'm not even sure to what to attribute arduino's success. I think they just made the simple things (GPIO and loading code to the device) simpler than anyone else. And even that is not done terribly well on an absolute scale. Think about how often new users encountered FTDI driver issues over time...

A USB bootloader and a standard footprint with a line of addon shields. 10 years ago, the only choices I saw were to buy an uno or get a pic and somehow figure out how to program it with crazy dongles and things. It was an easy choice.

Re: Arduino Goes Pro at CES 2020

#157

Post by wolrah »

katmannthree wrote: post #25
vb6sp6 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you should stick with the language you know the best, especially if you are the one doing the coding.

I agree with that, but writing code for industrial applications is fundamentally different from whipping up a backend for the hottest new Lyft for Parrots startup. If industrial equipment malfunctions, people can be killed or horribly maimed. Industrial equipment needs to do exactly what it was designed to do 24/7 for years or decades in horrible (EMI, temperature, etc) environments.

If someone is dumb enough to be using an Arduino in a life-critical application then what language they're programming it in is almost a moot point.

To the larger point of coding for these kinds of applications, keep in mind that there are entire classes of bugs that are common in traditional microcontroller languages like C which literally do not exist in Python or Javascript.

As far as I've seen as an outsider to the embedded world the main barriers to adoption of higher level languages have not been based upon concerns of reliability, but instead memory usage and timing constraints, the former of which is less and less of a real problem outside of extremely cost constrained applications.

Re: Arduino Goes Pro at CES 2020

#158

Post by gmiller123456 »

winsome wrote: post #144
gmiller123456 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you actually try to buy one from the very few distributors permitted to sell them, you'll either end up paying $5-$7 in shipping, when it could be shipped for closer to $1 USPS. And you're only allowed to buy one. Or, if you walk in to a MicroCenter, the only distributor with a physical location you can walk in to and buy one, they're either out of stock, or again you're limited to just one, but you can buy more…

I ran into this problem the other week. I was trying to buy 5 pi zeros for a few projects I have in mind and a couple of backups to have lying around. Couldn't do it. Very frustrating.

Anyone needing to buy several Pi W's should look into the Orange Pi Zero. They also play some games with the shipping cost, but at least the shipping cost per unit goes down the more you buy. Buying 5 would run you $10.60 each, and 10 would cost $10.30. (All US shipping prices from AliExpress)

The main thing to look out for is that it doesn't have HDMI out, only two headers for composite out. I imagine most people plan to run them headless anyway, but unless you have something that can display composite video, it can be a pain to set up at first.

Another option is that when you buy from Adafruit, you can buy one of each version. One Zero, one Zero W, and one Zero WH, for $29 plus shipping. You can then buy a USB WiFi adapter off E-Bay for about $1 shipped, and as many USB OTG adapters as you need for less than $1 each. Depending on shipping, that puts you in the $11-$12 per board range.

Re: Arduino Goes Pro at CES 2020

#159

Post by contingencies »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #152
Zagitta wrote: post #137

In my opinion Arduino and "pro" does not belong in the same sentence. I work as an embedded software engineer who's tasked with ripping all the terrible arduino code out of a fairly large codebase where I work and the arduino core libraries are the lowest quality code I've ever had the displeasure of working with. It's full of awful decisions everywhere in the arduino core libraries such as defining min and max macro…

And yet Arduino has created an ecosystem of libraries, tutorials, blogs and communities that changed the industry. Now you can program dozens of chips with Arduino core, such as ESP8266/32, etc. If it wasn't for arduino, many project would never take off. At university I was taught to program microchip pic16 and oh boy was it painfull. Their software was low quality, errors were incomprehensible, etc. I think Arduino…

Agreed. Manufacturers that need volume won't touch $100 per item plus the supply chain reliability issues of Arduino distribution. Portenta is therefore, at best, only useful for a niche area of higher processing requirement small volume users.

At small volume with assured availability right now you can plug together off the shelf microcontrollers and ethernet modules for $3-5 per node. That's 5% of the Portenta price.

What Arduino originally did right was USB flashing + cross platform IDE + library management + examples + media noise. The fact nobody else has bested them is a sad comment on industry.

Re: Arduino Goes Pro at CES 2020

#160

Post by bsder »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #152
Zagitta wrote: post #137

In my opinion Arduino and "pro" does not belong in the same sentence. I work as an embedded software engineer who's tasked with ripping all the terrible arduino code out of a fairly large codebase where I work and the arduino core libraries are the lowest quality code I've ever had the displeasure of working with. It's full of awful decisions everywhere in the arduino core libraries such as defining min and max macro…

And yet Arduino has created an ecosystem of libraries, tutorials, blogs and communities that changed the industry. Now you can program dozens of chips with Arduino core, such as ESP8266/32, etc. If it wasn't for arduino, many project would never take off. At university I was taught to program microchip pic16 and oh boy was it painfull. Their software was low quality, errors were incomprehensible, etc. I think Arduino…

> And yet Arduino has created an ecosystem of libraries, tutorials, blogs and communities that changed the industry.

Has it, really? I have difficulty finding projects that went from Arduino to major success.

The only thing which (I think) has an Arduino that actually became a "success" is the Formlabs 3D SLS resin printer.

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