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The New Altair: Why the Arduino Matters

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Re: The New Altair: Why the Arduino Matters

#11

Post by atduskgreg »

brianobush wrote: post #10

agreed, the arduino is oversold in and of itself. However it does remove the need for a separate programmer board/aparatus and a simple language. The ease of just using USB is a win along with a mixed community of experts, amateurs and kids. The synergy and accessibility is the main point of the article IMHO.

You got it exactly. I'm not arguing that the Arduino is going to be sitting on office desks or pants pockets everywhere, but that whoever invents the thing that is will have cut their teeth and learned what works on an Arduino.

Re: The New Altair: Why the Arduino Matters

#12

Post by pingswept »

atduskgreg wrote: post #5
ajross wrote: post #2

Way oversold. The Arduino is a nifty AVR microcontroller board, no more and no less. It's distinguished from other such things that have appeared over the years (anyone remember the BASIC Stamp?) only by price (cheaper, but not much cheaper) and integration (it has a USB device plug and a reasonably attractive IDE). It's not breaking any ground that hasn't been a four-lane highway for the last two decades. But it's c…

You sound exactly like the people criticizing the Altair when it first arose. How many elementary school kids or design students or Ruby programmers ever hacked the Basic Stamp? Whether it be historical coincidence or simply passing some minimal threshold of price/ease-of-use, these small improvements sometimes result in dramatic epochal changes.

> How many elementary school kids or design students or Ruby programmers ever hacked the Basic Stamp?

I think the answer across the three categories is probably above 10,000. The Arduino is sweet and the development environment is better than what Parallax supplied, but I think you're overstating the case. I think it would be fair to say that Basic, as typically used on a Basic Stamp, is substantially less complicated than Ruby.

Re: The New Altair: Why the Arduino Matters

#13

Post by atduskgreg »

pingswept wrote: post #12
atduskgreg wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You sound exactly like the people criticizing the Altair when it first arose. How many elementary school kids or design students or Ruby programmers ever hacked the Basic Stamp? Whether it be historical coincidence or simply passing some minimal threshold of price/ease-of-use, these small improvements sometimes result in dramatic epochal changes.

> How many elementary school kids or design students or Ruby programmers ever hacked the Basic Stamp? I think the answer across the three categories is probably above 10,000. The Arduino is sweet and the development environment is better than what Parallax supplied, but I think you're overstating the case. I think it would be fair to say that Basic, as typically used on a Basic Stamp, is substantially less complicate…

Maybe above 10,000 if you aggregate over the entire multi-decade period that the Basic Stamp has been around. Maybe. Also, BASIC the programming language may be simpler than Ruby, it may even be simpler that C/C++ that you program the Arduino in. But it's still much harder to get starter programming a Basic Stamp and much harder to get it to do anything useful. How long would it take an intermediate PHP programmer with no previous electronics experience to build a device that posted a tweet whenever they pressed a button using a Basic Stamp? With an Arduino and the right shields, that project would take less than an hour including downloading the IDE and getting everything configured.

Re: The New Altair: Why the Arduino Matters

#14

Post by hugs »

atduskgreg wrote: post #11
brianobush wrote: post #10

agreed, the arduino is oversold in and of itself. However it does remove the need for a separate programmer board/aparatus and a simple language. The ease of just using USB is a win along with a mixed community of experts, amateurs and kids. The synergy and accessibility is the main point of the article IMHO.

You got it exactly. I'm not arguing that the Arduino is going to be sitting on office desks or pants pockets everywhere, but that whoever invents the thing that is will have cut their teeth and learned what works on an Arduino.

Arduino is the Python of dev boards in that Python has an explicit goal of "batteries included" -- to include everything you need to be productive right away. Ironically, in the case of Arduino, batteries are technically not included, but that's because you get power directly from USB. :-) But metaphorically, Arduino is as "batteries included" as Python.

Re: The New Altair: Why the Arduino Matters

#15

Post by pingswept »

atduskgreg wrote: post #13
pingswept wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How many elementary school kids or design students or Ruby programmers ever hacked the Basic Stamp? I think the answer across the three categories is probably above 10,000. The Arduino is sweet and the development environment is better than what Parallax supplied, but I think you're overstating the case. I think it would be fair to say that Basic, as typically used on a Basic Stamp, is substantially less complicate…

Maybe above 10,000 if you aggregate over the entire multi-decade period that the Basic Stamp has been around. Maybe. Also, BASIC the programming language may be simpler than Ruby, it may even be simpler that C/C++ that you program the Arduino in. But it's still much harder to get starter programming a Basic Stamp and much harder to get it to do anything useful. How long would it take an intermediate PHP programmer wi…

For embedded programming (twiddling digital I/O, motor control, and the like), I think the Arduino and the Basic Stamp are comparable in ease of use, or at least in the same ballpark. I've used both; I'm not just making this up.

On the other hand, you're entirely right about Ethernet connectivity. Making a Basic Stamp tweet is somewhere between nontrivial and impossible.

Still, I don't think that the Arduino is miles ahead of its competitors. It's definitely sweet for small projects with limited I/O, storage, and bandwidth requirements. There are lots of embedded Ethernet boards that offer comparable performance/price ratios. To me, the Arduino seems slightly ahead in ease of use for beginners, but that's about it.

(Edit:) As competitors, I'd offer:

  http://makezine.com/controller/
  http://www.rabbit.com/products/
  http://www.gumstix.com/store/catalog/index.php
  http://www.embeddedarm.com/products/index.php
They're all harder to use than an Arduino, but I think they win on performance/price. And they're not that hard to use. The Make controller, in particular, is quite easy.

Re: The New Altair: Why the Arduino Matters

#16

Post by ladyada »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #6
coconutrandom wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In their defense, it's not claiming to "break ground" any more than the PC broke ground over the mainframes at the time. But as a software hacker wanting to move to meatspace, what do you suggest as better?

90% of everything that I've seen done with the Arduino (that doesn't require portability) can be done with an old PC that has a parallel port and any Linux distro that has gcc. I'm not dissing the Arduino; I think it's an interesting platform, but it really is overhyped.

a PC doesn't have analog inputs, cant do PWM outputs, struggles with protocols like i2c, isnt realtime. but it is: loud, hard to enclose nicely, costs more and requires maintenance.

Re: The New Altair: Why the Arduino Matters

#17

Post by jrbedard »

lallysingh wrote: post #4

In comparison: http://www.xgamestation.com/ Build your own video game system, run atari-esqe games on there. More avenues for fun in my book.

yes, and I highly recommend reading André LaMothe's books (xgamestation's sole creator) and his posts on the xgamestation forum (user necron). He's an highly skilled hacker and entrepreneur.

Re: The New Altair: Why the Arduino Matters

#18

Post by ladyada »

woadwarrior01 wrote: post #7
coconutrandom wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In their defense, it's not claiming to "break ground" any more than the PC broke ground over the mainframes at the time. But as a software hacker wanting to move to meatspace, what do you suggest as better?

I feel the Arduino is little overhyped. It isn't too hard to build your own PIC or AVR programmer on a veroboard and start hacking. I find the BeagleBoard to be a lot more promising/interesting given the amount of raw processing power you get on a tiny 3"x3" board.

"It isn't too hard to build your own PIC or AVR programmer on a veroboard and start hacking. "

Actually, it is. People who are 'starting hacking' dont know how to hack, so they dont clock, power or wire their chips correctly. They don't have a scope so its impossible to debug, especially when there are multiple unknowns (power, clock, wiring, programmer, progammer driver, programming software, compiler, code)

"I find the BeagleBoard to be a lot more promising/interesting given the amount of raw processing power you get on a tiny 3"x3" board."

I like the BB too. But am puzzled as to why people compare it to Arduino. They are completely different things (computer vs microcontroller dev board) I can't think of any projects that really intersect between the two. BB can't do even the most basic things that an Arduino does, like blink LEDs or drive a servo. And of course, an Arduino cant do real time video processing

Re: The New Altair: Why the Arduino Matters

#19

Post by atduskgreg »

pingswept wrote: post #15
atduskgreg wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe above 10,000 if you aggregate over the entire multi-decade period that the Basic Stamp has been around. Maybe. Also, BASIC the programming language may be simpler than Ruby, it may even be simpler that C/C++ that you program the Arduino in. But it's still much harder to get starter programming a Basic Stamp and much harder to get it to do anything useful. How long would it take an intermediate PHP programmer wi…

For embedded programming (twiddling digital I/O, motor control, and the like), I think the Arduino and the Basic Stamp are comparable in ease of use, or at least in the same ballpark. I've used both; I'm not just making this up. On the other hand, you're entirely right about Ethernet connectivity. Making a Basic Stamp tweet is somewhere between nontrivial and impossible. Still, I don't think that the Arduino is miles…

Those are all cool boards, but they are dramatically more expensive 3-10x and harder to get started with. I've used BASIC Stamp as well and so am not "making this up either". When I was first getting started with physical computing stuff, I tried to use BASIC Stamp and ran into quite a large number of difficulties. While the BASIC language is relatively straightforward, the installation/first run story is full of bad pitfalls. And BASIC Stamp also forces you to know a lot more about [edit: PIC not AVR] architecture in order to accomplish the basic things. Again, these obstacles aren't that big for programmers/more experienced EE-types, but for regular people they are deal breakers.

Re: The New Altair: Why the Arduino Matters

#20

Post by atduskgreg »

ladyada wrote: post #18
woadwarrior01 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel the Arduino is little overhyped. It isn't too hard to build your own PIC or AVR programmer on a veroboard and start hacking. I find the BeagleBoard to be a lot more promising/interesting given the amount of raw processing power you get on a tiny 3"x3" board.

"It isn't too hard to build your own PIC or AVR programmer on a veroboard and start hacking. " Actually, it is. People who are 'starting hacking' dont know how to hack, so they dont clock, power or wire their chips correctly. They don't have a scope so its impossible to debug, especially when there are multiple unknowns (power, clock, wiring, programmer, progammer driver, programming software, compiler, code) "I find…

Ladyada, I think the reason that people compare it to Arduino is not so much because it's in the same category (which it's obviously not), but because it seems to be bringing the "Arduino philosophy" to the low-level ARM/embedded Linux sphere. As someone who went from zero embedded device hacking to some fluency because of Arduino, the Beagle Board seems exciting because it has the chance of opening up that related space to me as well.
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