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Sparkfun offering discounts on Arduino day

sparkfun.com

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Re: Sparkfun offering discounts on Arduino day

#11

Post by ballooney »

Eduardo3rd wrote: post #2

$3 for a micro controller as powerful as the Pro is absolutely insane. I remember paying 10x that price for some components for an early generation Arduino back in college 5 years ago. Eventually I'm sure that $3 will be the normal retail price for these boards, at which point I think we will start to see some amazingly disruptive disposable electronics emerge. Isn't it great to live in the future?

The arduino is really just a breakout board for a microcontroller made by Atmel, with a simplified development environment to lower the barrier to entry. The microcontroller chip itself has always been a couple of dollars, and was before the arduino was invented.

Really you could say that paying $20/board to break out a $2 chip was the insane bit (of course, if it makes the difference between you tinkering and not tinkering, totally worth it). It certainly hasn't been the cost of making arduinos that's been holding back your 'amazingly disruptive disposable electronics' - no chinese factory will have been paying more than a few cents in total parts costs for their mass-produced widgets of this sort for years now.

If you want garage-tinkering-friendly microcontrollers, can I tempt you with the newish NXP LPC810 [1]? It has a 32-bit core which can run at 30MHz (as compared to the 8-bit core running at about 16MHz on the arduino, iirc), and they're $1.37 in single units, less than 60 cents if you want 1000. ARM maintain a whole GNU toolchain [2] to develop on them - it couldn't be easier.

[1] http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/LPC810M021FN8FP/568...

[2] https://launchpad.net/gcc-arm-embedded

Re: Sparkfun offering discounts on Arduino day

#12

Post by morganherlocker »

danielweber wrote: post #8

As a n00b, what's the minimum I need to have to play with an Arduino? Will generally any Linux / Windows / Mac computer be able to run the software and connecting hardware I need to program it?

Pretty much. I set one up for the first time a couple weeks ago and it could not have been easier. Bare minimum "hello world" would basically just be a board, a USB cable, a computer with a USB port, and an LED.

Re: Sparkfun offering discounts on Arduino day

#13

Post by Zergy »

danielweber wrote: post #8

As a n00b, what's the minimum I need to have to play with an Arduino? Will generally any Linux / Windows / Mac computer be able to run the software and connecting hardware I need to program it?

Linux, Windows, and Mac are all supported by the tools. Additionally the tools are very light weight, just about everything can run them no problem.

Re: Sparkfun offering discounts on Arduino day

#14

Post by hlfshell »

danielweber wrote: post #8

As a n00b, what's the minimum I need to have to play with an Arduino? Will generally any Linux / Windows / Mac computer be able to run the software and connecting hardware I need to program it?

If you get a normal Arduino (there's a bajillion variants, so I won't address all of those) you need any computer made in the past 15 years running Linux / Windows / Mac, and a usb -> usb A connector. Most Arduinos include that. I suggest, however, you buy some electronic parts - a couple of LEDs or sensors - via a kit and a jumper kit (a bunch of pre-bent color coded sized wires) and a breadboard to experiment.

Also, check out for local hackerspacers, as there will definitely be people that to set you on the right path.

Re: Sparkfun offering discounts on Arduino day

#16

Post by kruffin »

danielweber wrote: post #8

As a n00b, what's the minimum I need to have to play with an Arduino? Will generally any Linux / Windows / Mac computer be able to run the software and connecting hardware I need to program it?

You'll want an Arduino that has headers and a usb connector already soldered on and the usb cable to fit it. That's really the bare minimum. From the article, this one looks like it would fit: https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11575 and only $9 on sale day.

Now if you want it to do something you can see other than in the logs from within the IDE, that's when you start needing more stuff. Generally a breadboard, wires, and some components like leds and resistors come next; for making blinking lights, who doesn't like those?

As far as the computer, it can be best answered here but is just about anything you have: http://arduino.cc/en/Guide/HomePage in the getting started section.

Re: Sparkfun offering discounts on Arduino day

#17

Post by zaf »

danielweber wrote: post #8

As a n00b, what's the minimum I need to have to play with an Arduino? Will generally any Linux / Windows / Mac computer be able to run the software and connecting hardware I need to program it?

You could try codebender ( https://codebender.cc/ ) which is a browser based IDE that requires a simple browser plugin to be installed to communicate with your arduino.
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