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The Adafruit Feather and FeatherWing System

learn.adafruit.com

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Re: The Adafruit Feather and FeatherWing System

#2
"Wouldn't it be great if, instead of collecting shields, HATs, PMODs, Clicks, Booster Packs, Props... you could have a cross-compatible platform? Something that doesn't force you into one chipset? and allows you to mix-and-match the microcontroller, wireless protocol, and functional extensions?

Yeah, me too! That's why I created Feather. Feather is a flexible and powerful family of microcontroller main-boards (Feathers) and daughter-boards (Wings) with a wide range of capabilities."

Re: The Adafruit Feather and FeatherWing System

#5
post #3

Wouldn't it be great if feathers, PMODs, etc. all used ROS2 to provide publish/subscribe and services so that anything could "just work"?

Feathers are primarily microcontrollers--Atmel AVR, ARM Cortex M0/M4, ESP32, etc. Stuff with kilobytes of memory and low megahertz of speed. None of them can run ROS or any Linux-based OS/RTOS hybrid.

Re: The Adafruit Feather and FeatherWing System

#7

"Wouldn't it be great if, instead of collecting shields, HATs, PMODs, Clicks, Booster Packs, Props... you could have a cross-compatible platform? Something that doesn't force you into one chipset? and allows you to mix-and-match the microcontroller, wireless protocol, and functional extensions? Yeah, me too! That's why I created Feather. Feather is a flexible and powerful family of microcontroller main-boards (Feathe…

Obligatory: https://xkcd.com/927/

Re: The Adafruit Feather and FeatherWing System

#8

"Wouldn't it be great if, instead of collecting shields, HATs, PMODs, Clicks, Booster Packs, Props... you could have a cross-compatible platform? Something that doesn't force you into one chipset? and allows you to mix-and-match the microcontroller, wireless protocol, and functional extensions? Yeah, me too! That's why I created Feather. Feather is a flexible and powerful family of microcontroller main-boards (Feathe…

I've never gotten the obsession with prescribing form factors to breakout boards.

What do I lose buying a generic breakout board for half the price of a branded shield/hat/wing and hooking it up on a $2 piece of protoboard or with some jumpers?

Re: The Adafruit Feather and FeatherWing System

#10

"Wouldn't it be great if, instead of collecting shields, HATs, PMODs, Clicks, Booster Packs, Props... you could have a cross-compatible platform? Something that doesn't force you into one chipset? and allows you to mix-and-match the microcontroller, wireless protocol, and functional extensions? Yeah, me too! That's why I created Feather. Feather is a flexible and powerful family of microcontroller main-boards (Feathe…

I've never gotten the obsession with prescribing form factors to breakout boards. What do I lose buying a generic breakout board for half the price of a branded shield/hat/wing and hooking it up on a $2 piece of protoboard or with some jumpers?

You haven't lost anything. It's about what others can gain. Meaning, those who don't (yet) know how to make their own boards or dont care how the interfaces work can still plug a couple of boards together and make a working system.

The reductio ad adsurbum on this would compare these boards to PCI cards for your PC - you wouldn't expect the majority of PC users to have to hand assemble their GPU would you?

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