Why we won't be selling Genuino or Arduino any more • Hacker News Board

Re: Why we won't be selling Genuino or Arduino any more

#241

Post by brokenmachine » Fri, Aug 12, 2016, 4:57 AM UTC

nameless912 wrote: post #217

nathancahill wrote: post #28

Serious question: what are people building with these boards? The recurring projects I've seen are controlling lights, doors/locks and monitoring water in plants. I don't find these particularly compelling, am I missing something? How is this the next big thing?

Well, the easy answer is the arduino is "easier" to get into than most other embedded development boards. These days, though, that's becoming less and less true. You can pick up an ESP8266-based board complete with USB-serial built in and motherfucking Wi-Fi for 15 bucks from Adafruit, and it's identical to an Arduino code-wise (i.e. you can use nearly all the nice fuzzy constructs that the Arduino version of Process…

Yeah, it's crazy now.

In my opinion, the Wemos D1 Mini seems like the best ESP8266 board at the moment.

Fits on a breadboard nicely, lots of GPIO, obviously wifi, all nicely set up with a reset button and auto programming mode on a built-in usb serial.

And the best part, I just bought one for AU$3.34 (US$2.57) on Aliexpress!!

Re: Why we won't be selling Genuino or Arduino any more

#242

Post by kordless » Fri, Aug 12, 2016, 5:25 AM UTC

brokenmachine wrote: post #235

kordless wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I messed around with several versions of these and will say they are all sorts of a pain in the ass to get going. The Python stack I was using on them kept crashing when I would put it into power saver mode. Still, it's pretty cool you can buy one for like $2 and basically have a computer that runs Python with some minimal microcontroller functionality.

I think the software support has improved a lot since I first checked them out about a year ago. I've only used the Arduino libraries, but I haven't had a problem yet. Funny that a 160MHz board with wifi built-in can be referred to as "minimal microcontroller functionality" nowadays.

Well, I consider a microcontroller to be controlling something not on board, so yeah. :) It's minimal in that it has two pinouts.

Re: Why we won't be selling Genuino or Arduino any more

#243

Post by mk7 » Fri, Aug 12, 2016, 6:37 AM UTC

herbst wrote: post #145

mk7 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if real CPU computer is cheaper than the microcontroller, you may start comparing it... :-)

Except you want that thing to run on battery, or act in near real time.

Regarding battery: +1 Regarding real time: you can have it also on RaspPi!

Re: Why we won't be selling Genuino or Arduino any more

#244

Post by brokenmachine » Fri, Aug 12, 2016, 6:47 AM UTC

erichocean wrote: post #137

Anyone know of any small, low-cost, battery powered programmable boards for Bluetooth LE? I've got the Pi 3 and CHIP is ordered, but I'd love something smaller if possible. Thanks!

Adafruit Feather 32u4 Bluefruit LE has an Atmega32u4 (same as Arduino), LiPoly charger and BTLE built in for $30.

I'm cheap, so soon I'm going to have a go at reflashing a $3 HC06 module with the RN-42 firmware [1], and using that with a $3 Arduino Pro Micro and a $1 TP4056 Charger board for the same capabilities but messier. I always learn more by messing around though.

[1] https://mitxela.com/projects/bluetooth_hid_gamepad

Re: Why we won't be selling Genuino or Arduino any more

#245

Post by neltnerb » Sat, Aug 13, 2016, 3:28 AM UTC

brokenmachine wrote: post #234

neltnerb wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've entirely moved from Arduino to the Teensy, which is pretty much entirely software-compatible (excepting pin number changes), but uses an ARM Cortex M4 with 32-bit architecture at up to 96MHz on a much smaller board. The guy who makes them is also incredibly helpful on the support forums and constantly adding new features. The peripherals are so much better it's comical. Basically all pins capable of 16-bit PWM,…

Teensy is great but mostly overkill for the kinds of basic IOT stuff that I find myself doing. I do want to do a project using a teensy with the audio board for beat detection eventually, but the teensy audio library still doesn't suppert beat detection. Paul posted that he would be adding it a couple of years ago I think, but it currently isn't implemented. ESP8266 for ~$3 at 160MHz with wifi built-in is such a barg…

Aha, yeah, that does look quite nice. I haven't done a wifi project in a while, but the last one I did [1] I nixed using a wifi chip itself since they didn't have enough PWM outputs. It seems like they've gotten better enough that I could just use the one chip to make my wifi lighting projects vastly simpler.

[1] http://www.instructables.com/id/Ultra-bright-LED-Color-Chang... (things have come a long way since 2010!)

Re: Why we won't be selling Genuino or Arduino any more

#246

Post by kbob » Sun, Aug 14, 2016, 5:41 AM UTC

nathancahill wrote: post #28

Serious question: what are people building with these boards? The recurring projects I've seen are controlling lights, doors/locks and monitoring water in plants. I don't find these particularly compelling, am I missing something? How is this the next big thing?

Arduino is not the next big thing; it's arguably a few years past its peak. But the thing is, it's really really fast to prototype stuff.

Last week I needed to convert an analog voltage to a pulse width -- I had a potentiometer and I wanted to control an ESC. It took me less than 10 minutes to breadboard and code that on an Arduino clone (Teensy).

The week before, I needed a frequency counter. Again, it took less than 10 minutes.

I've done more elaborate projects, but the point is that the overhead to get started is tiny.

Re: Why we won't be selling Genuino or Arduino any more

#247

Post by brokenmachine » Tue, Aug 16, 2016, 1:18 AM UTC

brokenmachine wrote: post #241

nameless912 wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the easy answer is the arduino is "easier" to get into than most other embedded development boards. These days, though, that's becoming less and less true. You can pick up an ESP8266-based board complete with USB-serial built in and motherfucking Wi-Fi for 15 bucks from Adafruit, and it's identical to an Arduino code-wise (i.e. you can use nearly all the nice fuzzy constructs that the Arduino version of Process…

Yeah, it's crazy now. In my opinion, the Wemos D1 Mini seems like the best ESP8266 board at the moment. Fits on a breadboard nicely, lots of GPIO, obviously wifi, all nicely set up with a reset button and auto programming mode on a built-in usb serial. And the best part, I just bought one for AU$3.34 (US$2.57) on Aliexpress!!

Oh yeah, the D1 Mini also has a very low quiescent current (25uA) RT9013 regulator, so it should be much better for use on battery power than the nodemcu with the LM1117 which uses 5mA! That's 200x less current wasted!

Also the dropout voltage is only 250mV compared to about 1V for the LM1117. You couldn't use a LiPoly battery to power it with an LM1117 because of the high dropout voltage.