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Why Google Choosing Arduino Matters

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Re: Why Google Choosing Arduino Matters

#2
It's a seriously exciting time to be a developer. Or to be alive in general, really.

Growing up in the shadow of our failure to colonize space, it was easy to imagine that history had basically stalled and there wasn't much left to hope for except an uneventful decline. Added to that, all our interesting problems were too big for an individual to hope to solve.

Instead, the ability for individuals to meaningfully innovate has jumped to levels that haven't been seen since the industrial revolution, or the renaissance. I always envied the 19th Century inventors who created bleeding edge tech without requiring teams of a thousand engineers. I don't think I need to be envious anymore. The coming decades will be just as important.

Re: Why Google Choosing Arduino Matters

#3
I'm 100% delighted that Google chose to standardize on the Arduino platform, but I fear it means we'll now be stuck with the infuriating 0.160" header spacing between shield pins forever.

Background: http://brettbeauregard.com/blog/2009/07/arduino-offset-heade...

Here's the explanation of how the bad spacing happened from Massimo Banzi: http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1212632541 (scroll down 10-15 posts)

"We had 5 minutes before the deadline to go into production, the PCB guy was on the phone saying 'send it now or it goes to next week' and we didn't have a name yet... they I said let's call it Arduino like a bar we used to go...there wasn't much time to think."

Re: Why Google Choosing Arduino Matters

#4

I'm 100% delighted that Google chose to standardize on the Arduino platform, but I fear it means we'll now be stuck with the infuriating 0.160" header spacing between shield pins forever. Background: http://brettbeauregard.com/blog/2009/07/arduino-offset-heade... Here's the explanation of how the bad spacing happened from Massimo Banzi: http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1212632541 (scroll down 10-15 pos…

Agree. The arduino processor is also pretty weak given the price/performance ratio. I'm in favor of seeing them work with say an arm-5 or arm-7 device.

Re: Why Google Choosing Arduino Matters

#5
post #4

I'm 100% delighted that Google chose to standardize on the Arduino platform, but I fear it means we'll now be stuck with the infuriating 0.160" header spacing between shield pins forever. Background: http://brettbeauregard.com/blog/2009/07/arduino-offset-heade... Here's the explanation of how the bad spacing happened from Massimo Banzi: http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1212632541 (scroll down 10-15 pos…

Agree. The arduino processor is also pretty weak given the price/performance ratio. I'm in favor of seeing them work with say an arm-5 or arm-7 device.

Yeah, I'd love to see someone make an open-source ARM9 board that runs Linux, but works with Arduino stuff, and has good libraries for controlling the hardware. The first version of the Chumby Hacker Board was a good candidate, but they removed the Arduino headers on more recent versions.

Re: Why Google Choosing Arduino Matters

#6
post #4

I'm 100% delighted that Google chose to standardize on the Arduino platform, but I fear it means we'll now be stuck with the infuriating 0.160" header spacing between shield pins forever. Background: http://brettbeauregard.com/blog/2009/07/arduino-offset-heade... Here's the explanation of how the bad spacing happened from Massimo Banzi: http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1212632541 (scroll down 10-15 pos…

Agree. The arduino processor is also pretty weak given the price/performance ratio. I'm in favor of seeing them work with say an arm-5 or arm-7 device.

Yea, it should be possible - the Arduino code is an abstraction above C anyway.

Re: Why Google Choosing Arduino Matters

#7
post #2

It's a seriously exciting time to be a developer. Or to be alive in general, really. Growing up in the shadow of our failure to colonize space, it was easy to imagine that history had basically stalled and there wasn't much left to hope for except an uneventful decline. Added to that, all our interesting problems were too big for an individual to hope to solve. Instead, the ability for individuals to meaningfully inn…

I want to share this excitement with you, but what part about an arduino based dev kit for android is exciting you this much?

Re: Why Google Choosing Arduino Matters

#8
post #4

I'm 100% delighted that Google chose to standardize on the Arduino platform, but I fear it means we'll now be stuck with the infuriating 0.160" header spacing between shield pins forever. Background: http://brettbeauregard.com/blog/2009/07/arduino-offset-heade... Here's the explanation of how the bad spacing happened from Massimo Banzi: http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1212632541 (scroll down 10-15 pos…

Agree. The arduino processor is also pretty weak given the price/performance ratio. I'm in favor of seeing them work with say an arm-5 or arm-7 device.

[deleted]

Re: Why Google Choosing Arduino Matters

#9
post #2

It's a seriously exciting time to be a developer. Or to be alive in general, really. Growing up in the shadow of our failure to colonize space, it was easy to imagine that history had basically stalled and there wasn't much left to hope for except an uneventful decline. Added to that, all our interesting problems were too big for an individual to hope to solve. Instead, the ability for individuals to meaningfully inn…

I want to share this excitement with you, but what part about an arduino based dev kit for android is exciting you this much?

It's just a symptom of this kind of technology reaching critical mass. In a few years, the majority of the world's mobile devices will have out of the box support for an extensible, personal hardware development platform. A generation of kids will grow up thinking this is normal. The cat is out of the bag.

Re: Why Google Choosing Arduino Matters

#10
post #4

I'm 100% delighted that Google chose to standardize on the Arduino platform, but I fear it means we'll now be stuck with the infuriating 0.160" header spacing between shield pins forever. Background: http://brettbeauregard.com/blog/2009/07/arduino-offset-heade... Here's the explanation of how the bad spacing happened from Massimo Banzi: http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1212632541 (scroll down 10-15 pos…

Agree. The arduino processor is also pretty weak given the price/performance ratio. I'm in favor of seeing them work with say an arm-5 or arm-7 device.

It's not just about the CPU. The AVRs have a lot of handy peripherals that are easy for novice developers to access.

Plus, sometimes you just don't feel like dealing with a whole *nix/BSD toolchain just to drive a PLL chip or handle some other trivial housekeeping task. For those times, the AVRs are great. They can be targeted by 32-bit GCC just like anything else.

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