The New Altair: Why the Arduino Matters
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The New Altair: Why the Arduino Matters
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Re: The New Altair: Why the Arduino Matters
#2Way 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 cute and cheap, and if you're interested in playing with embedded stuff or hardware control, I'm sure it's a lot of fun.
But "the next Altair?". Please.
Re: The New Altair: Why the Arduino Matters
#3Way 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…
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?
Re: The New Altair: Why the Arduino Matters
#4In comparison: http://www.xgamestation.com/
Build your own video game system, run atari-esqe games on there. More avenues for fun in my book.
Re: The New Altair: Why the Arduino Matters
#5Way 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.
Re: The New Altair: Why the Arduino Matters
#6Way 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…
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.
Re: The New Altair: Why the Arduino Matters
#7Way 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…
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.
Re: The New Altair: Why the Arduino Matters
#8Earlier 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.
I definitely agree that the BeagleBoard is really interesting as well. I've got some friends working on a building an incredibly simple OS that would be used for education and tinkering. However, if you don't think the barrier to entry of having to build a board from scratch and jump over all the other proprietary hoops for working with PIC keeps out lots of people -- from programmers and other non-hardware geeks to artists, designers, kids, teachers, etc. -- you need to work on increasing your empathy with people who aren't you.
Re: The New Altair: Why the Arduino Matters
#9Way 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…
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?
Depends entirely on what you want to do in "meatspace", of course. There are lots of options for, say, robot control out there. Hacking one's Roomba seems popular. If you have a spare laptop or netbook, there are huge numbers of USB-based interface devices you can use to deal with the outside world without even leaving the comfort of your PC.
And, when you're ready for "serious" work (something other than turning lights and motors on and reading sensors at 10 Hz), you'll probably want to be looking at FPGA development boards and learning Verilog or VHDL. Take a look at the products from http://knjn.com for example.
Re: The New Altair: Why the Arduino Matters
#10agreed, 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.