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Arduino Goes Pro at CES 2020

blog.arduino.cc

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Re: Arduino Goes Pro at CES 2020

#161
post #4

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

>Why would anybody use an Arduino versus a five dollar Raspberry Pi Zero? 1. The $5 Raspberry Pi Zero isn't really $5. 2. The fact that the $5 advertised price isn't the real price, and the inventory games they play raises ethical problems for some people. 3. You can get an Arduino clone for less than $2 (for real, and in bulk). 4. The Pi and other SBCs have higher power requirements, so they can't reliably run off A…

> The $5 Raspberry Pi Zero isn't really $5

It is a real price. For the Zero W. I bought one a year ago. Ordered it, then headed to the store a bit later. https://i.imgur.com/ajeH8PQ.png

They've since changed the price to $10.

Re: Arduino Goes Pro at CES 2020

#162
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why would anybody use an Arduino versus a five dollar Raspberry Pi Zero? 1. The $5 Raspberry Pi Zero isn't really $5. 2. The fact that the $5 advertised price isn't the real price, and the inventory games they play raises ethical problems for some people. 3. You can get an Arduino clone for less than $2 (for real, and in bulk). 4. The Pi and other SBCs have higher power requirements, so they can't reliably run off A…

But $5 is the real price of the Zero. Perhaps you’re thinking of the Zero W, which is $10? Or do you mean the $5 doesn’t include the power? If that’s what you mean, it should be noted that power doesn’t come with Arduinos either, and they both can be powered via USB. And to what unethical inventory games are you referring? That seems like a pretty serious accusation you’re making.

The $5 price is only valid for a single unit. When Microcenter has them has them in stock, they are typical $5 for 1, and $15 for every one after that. Other stores online who stock them avoid this issue by limiting you to a single item per cart. (I checked all three stores linked from the official RPi site; all behave that way.)

Microcenter often has the Zero W also discounted to $5 for a single and then $15 for every one after that. Right now, they have them discounted to $10 for 1 and $20 for every one after that. https://www.microcenter.com/product/486575/raspberry-pi-zero...

Forum post from a member of the Raspberry Pi team: "They will never be available in bulk amounts at the $5 and $10 price points, it's not cost effective to sell at that price. But they ARE available for bulk buys - i.e. demand no longer outstrips supply.

But we can sell individual items at that prices, for educational needs - i.e. those who cannot afford the higher price of the Pi3. Call it an educational discount." https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=201916#p1...

From the above, I agree with the other poster who claimed that $5 is not the real price for the Zero, but rather a limited quantity specially discounted price.

Re: Arduino Goes Pro at CES 2020

#163

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…

How does one write code for arduino?

Easiest way is to download their IDE (or use the web version) and code in C/C++.

32-bit ones also support Micropython and I think there have been ports of Node.js, but I haven't looked into those.

Re: Arduino Goes Pro at CES 2020

#164

I have pretty much given up on Arduino. They had me almost interested again when they announced the Pro IDE, but several months later they still haven't put the source code on Github: https://github.com/arduino/arduino-pro-ide I am not interested in the Electron-based IDE, but they seem to be using the Clang language server, which is perfect for integrating with Emacs. I have been sitting here for months ready to hac…

You can use Visual Studio/VS Code with plugins like (free) VisualMicros or (paid) VisualGDB to build Arduino C++ in a much better environment.

Re: Arduino Goes Pro at CES 2020

#165
post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Few directly to market. How they’ve changed the industry is by empowering non-EEs to prototype products that they can then take to engineers to DFM. I know of, or have built, countless products that started as Arduino prototypes, even if it was just to mock up the user experience.

Re: Arduino Goes Pro at CES 2020

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why would anybody use an Arduino versus a five dollar Raspberry Pi Zero? 1. The $5 Raspberry Pi Zero isn't really $5. 2. The fact that the $5 advertised price isn't the real price, and the inventory games they play raises ethical problems for some people. 3. You can get an Arduino clone for less than $2 (for real, and in bulk). 4. The Pi and other SBCs have higher power requirements, so they can't reliably run off A…

> The $5 Raspberry Pi Zero isn't really $5 It is a real price. For the Zero W. I bought one a year ago. Ordered it, then headed to the store a bit later. https://i.imgur.com/ajeH8PQ.png They've since changed the price to $10.

I also bought many at $5. One at a time on each trip into Microcenter.

IMO, if I can't buy 10 of something for $50 or 100 for $500, the "real price" isn't $5/unit. Microcenter would pretty consistently sell $5 for 1 and then $15 or $20 for each additional unit.

Re: Arduino Goes Pro at CES 2020

#167

I have pretty much given up on Arduino. They had me almost interested again when they announced the Pro IDE, but several months later they still haven't put the source code on Github: https://github.com/arduino/arduino-pro-ide I am not interested in the Electron-based IDE, but they seem to be using the Clang language server, which is perfect for integrating with Emacs. I have been sitting here for months ready to hac…

Too bad regarding the Arduino pro IDE. There’s so much room for improvement in microcontroller space. If you can use a Linux based SBC you might check out Nerves (nerves-project.org/). It’s nice for a lot of “one off” projects and with boards like orange pi zero, pi zero, etc the cost isn’t bad. I’m working on support for Omega2+ boards which are pretty low power and have decent WiFi. Still they’re not as suitable for low power, really small size, or real time projects. For microcontrollers, Rust seems to have decent support for a few of the STM boards. I’ve been tempted.

Re: Arduino Goes Pro at CES 2020

#168

I have pretty much given up on Arduino. They had me almost interested again when they announced the Pro IDE, but several months later they still haven't put the source code on Github: https://github.com/arduino/arduino-pro-ide I am not interested in the Electron-based IDE, but they seem to be using the Clang language server, which is perfect for integrating with Emacs. I have been sitting here for months ready to hac…

You can use Visual Studio/VS Code with plugins like (free) VisualMicros or (paid) VisualGDB to build Arduino C++ in a much better environment.

Platformio is also a good choice.

Re: Arduino Goes Pro at CES 2020

#169
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a bad question at all. The Arduino offers you the ability to code on a lower level, while the Raspberry Pi is giving you a full operating system. Some projects, especially IoT, don't need all the overhead of an OS with and without that comes improved reliability and better understanding of the state of the device.

Which is weird because you'd think the board that could run Linux would cost more than the one that you're not able to run an OS on.

The RPi (all variants) is more expensive than the readily available AVR boards that you would use to deploy a solution (even if those boards are just Arduino clones which are readily available for at/under $3 delivered to the US).

The genuine Arduinos are expensive. The clones are cheap.

Re: Arduino Goes Pro at CES 2020

#170
post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Few directly to market. How they’ve changed the industry is by empowering non-EEs to prototype products that they can then take to engineers to DFM. I know of, or have built, countless products that started as Arduino prototypes, even if it was just to mock up the user experience.

raises hand I worked on a product (a $150000 medical device) where I started out using an Arduino, but eventually replaced it with a ATmega.
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