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Why Google Choosing Arduino Matters

blog.makezine.com

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Re: Why Google Choosing Arduino Matters

#11

Post by rocha »

pingswept wrote: post #5
proee wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Something like this http://leaflabs.com/devices/ ?

Re: Why Google Choosing Arduino Matters

#12

Post by kwantam »

2) Apple will start to abandon their restrictive “Made for iPod”(TM) program and adopt the Arduino in some way for accessory development

Phil's a cool, intelligent guy, but this statement pegs my meter somewhere between "excessive optimism" and "ridiculous Apple fanboyism".

Apple, the infamous UX control freak, will give up the control (and revenue) associated with the MFi program in favor of allowing their users to customize their experience? What's next, Windows 8 will run an OpenBSD kernel?

Sorry, perhaps that last was excessively sarcastic, but let's be realistic here: one of Apple's fundamental properties is its fanatical control over every aspect of the way that users interface with the device, directly or indirectly. They will never give this up.

MS/NOK (funny how, at least in my mental model, they're one entity in the phone market now) and (especially) HP/Palm should be looking at this and thinking about doing the same. RIM probably doesn't care because their userbase doesn't.

Re: Why Google Choosing Arduino Matters

#13

Post by jedc »

pingswept wrote: post #5
proee wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Or something like http://mbed.org/ ?

Re: Why Google Choosing Arduino Matters

#15

Post by mortenjorck »

DanI-S wrote: post #9
acgourley wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We live in a cyberpunk present.

Re: Why Google Choosing Arduino Matters

#17

Post by ChuckMcM »

Fascinating as Mr. Spock would say.

I got goaded into teaching a class on Robotics at Google, it was well attended and the first thing we did was build FreeDuino's from Solarbotics. When coming up with a curriculum I chose the Arduino because it's development environment ran on MacOS and Linux (every engineer at Google had either a MacOS or Linux laptop, no Windows) and its use of C++ lite type models was a good match for the codebase they worked in on a day to day basis.

I designed (but sadly never got into production) a 'super sheild' which, if you installed the connectors in the Freeduino 'upside down' (relative to the instructions) you could plug it onto the robot shield thing which had 6 AA size batteries, a couple of motor controller chips, mounts for the GM8 (Solarbotics again) wheels with wheel encoders. And a bunch of bits for sensor logic.

That being said I certainly can't take credit for Google picking the platform as some of the folks were already familar with it but still its nice to see that this effort has lived on as it were.

Re: Why Google Choosing Arduino Matters

#19

Post by amalcon »

DanI-S wrote: 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…

This happens over and over. Compare the internal combustion engine.

A powerful technology is realized. At first, it's really expensive, and used only for industrial purposes or where it can serve many at once. The cost comes down to where wealthy individuals, professionals who benefit most, and sufficiently motivated hobbyists can get them, and there's huge growth. The cost comes down further, and soon everyone has them. At this point, the market becomes disjoint: you get products aimed for the wealthy (Apple; BMW, Ferrari), products aimed at the hobbyist (various DIY outfits; Jeep), products aimed at professionals who most benefit (RIM, Lenovo, Dell; some Ford/GM/Toyota products), and everyone else (LG, Nokia; Kia, other Ford/GM/Toyota products).

I think that middle stage is the most exciting; unfortunately, we're just leaving it. It's still a very exciting time to be a developer, but I would barely hesitate to trade it all to work at Xerox PARC or Bell Labs in their heyday.

On the upside, certain areas of biology are poised to move into that second stage any time now, in no small part because of the power commodity computing provides.

Re: Why Google Choosing Arduino Matters

#20

Post by follower »

inoop wrote: post #14

If anyone's interested, I got their firmware to run on stock Arduino hardware (which costs $55 instead of $390). http://romfont.com/2011/05/12/google%E2%80%99s-open-accessor... It's looking good so far. Now all I need is a device that supports accessory mode ...

Heh, me too--how long did it take you to write up your post? It would've been useful, ah, 8 hours ago. :)

I've tested a revision 1 SparkFun USB Host shield and UNO/Duo with pin define fixes and a Nexus One with Android 2.3.4 and the DemoKit app.

It "works" but seems a bit flakey needing multiple resets to move from detecting to data transfer. I'm suspecting possible power related reset issues.

Unfortunately my usual laptop is in the shop so I haven't documented this as I'd normally like.

Will take a look at what you've patched but first need to get some sleep. :)

Edit: Actually, it seems much more reliable when the Arduino is connected only to a 9V battery and not USB as well.

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