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Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

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Re: Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

#281

Post by scottbez1 »

bschwindHN wrote: post #164
snitty wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet there is clearly a market for easy-to-program MCUs for hobby and educational purposes.

I would argue the RP2040/2350 fills that niche. Cheap, available, easy to program, flexible peripherals, fast enough for many projects, good documentation, and good community support.

RPi's toolchain situation is awful for beginners/hobbyists. CMake and non-manifest-versioned toolchains are a huge barrier to entry. I'd love to use the hardware but have given up multiple times because I'd rather spend my time writing code than wrestling with toolchain setup. And they won't support platformio which could make things massively easier for beginners to set up.

Re: Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

#282

Post by ACCount37 »

geerlingguy wrote: post #260
ACCount37 wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I checked: there are board schematics for Uno Q there - but no datasheets or SDK or manuals or any documentation whatsoever for the QRB2210 SoC itself. Yep, it's Qualcomm alright.

Take it with a grain of salt, but the rep I've been in contact with said they'd be releasing more on the SoC...

Here's hoping. Qualcomm hardware would be fun to play with if it wasn't attached to, you know. The rest of Qualcomm.

Re: Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

#283

Post by estimator7292 »

ricw wrote: post #141
estimator7292 wrote: post #138

Shame to see Arduino go, but honestly how relevant are they anymore? The Arduino framework is one of the worst ways possible to write firmware for any slightly serious use, and their hardware is... quaint in the era of Espressif and the Cambrian explosion of devboards with any number of highly advanced features. Arduino was a great way to get into microcontrollers back when the only alternative was vendors' native li…

Curious what the better frameworks are these days? Are they tied to specific hardware like arduino was? And what language do they use?

Broad support for many different chips is precisely why Arduino is so bad. It has to check pin numbers against a gigantic table for every gpio call.

You want chip-specific libraries. When the software is designed for the hardware everything works better.

The native AVR and esp-IDF frameworks are very good. There's also micropython and circuit python. I've heard good things, but I don't partake in Python.

Personally I think attempting to provide a cross-platform library for microcontrollers is an enormous mistake. This is not x86, you can't rely on any CPU feature existing, which results in awful branching code in places that in a sane framework is a single instruction updating a CPU register

Re: Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

#284

Post by hart_russell »

magtux wrote: post #83

This is a recipe for disaster. Arduino is great for education/tinkering. Qualcomm won't sell you anything even if you are ready to commit to buying 1000s. I tried to source some Qualcomm chips for a startup @ 10k qty and was told there would be no information or support. Qualcomm can have a much bigger market if they simply open up some product lines for distribution like MediaTek do. China has a way more vibrant, in…

Yet another example of how corporate consolidation in America is hurting the consumer. FTC needs Lina Khan back to break up the oligopolies.

Re: Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

#285

Post by umeshunni »

vachina wrote: post #214
cosmicgadget wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's like the cost of two burritos. Unless you're bricking these things on the daily why would $1 vs $40 be the deciding factor for a project that is tens of hours at a minimum?

I buy 10s them and throw them around the house. I have a couple on AAA batteries and with deep sleep + watchdog wake on WiFi they last months.

What kind of projects are you using them for?

Re: Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

#286

Post by fidotron »

wibbily wrote: post #137
the__alchemist wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea... ST, Nordic etc have been sleeping on the Wi-Fi, letting Espressif corner that market. They both now have standalone Wi-Fi ICs, but no MCUs still; and it took them a while to release the ICs.

It’s a shame. Nordic’s chips blow the ESPs out of the water in terms of power consumption. You can get an nRF bluetooth dongle to run for months/years off a coin cell, almost without trying. Getting an ESP32 to behave is much harder IIRC their standalone wifi chip is pretty good even… just stick them together already c’mon.

I think Nordic etc. are resistant to telling people "if you want to use Wifi you must use FreeRTOS" or equivalent, so they push the two IC solution instead just so their Wifi stack is partitioned physically from the rest of your system.

It just pushes more integration headaches downstream to the customer, in addition to being inherently costlier. Espressif had the core right idea there, even if it's not the right decision for all designs.

Re: Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

#287

Post by zargon »

bschwindHN wrote: post #164
snitty wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet there is clearly a market for easy-to-program MCUs for hobby and educational purposes.

I would argue the RP2040/2350 fills that niche. Cheap, available, easy to program, flexible peripherals, fast enough for many projects, good documentation, and good community support.

Arduino was around long before RP2040, therefore RP2040 shouldn’t exist because the niche was already filled.

Re: Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

#288

Post by daemonologist »

cruffle_duffle wrote: post #133
suyash wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It used to be that but since Arduino and Pi have both gone full commercial, it's not longer viable. I teach kids coding and have been looking at alternatives like ESP or other boards that are much more cost effective and friendly for beginners.

Exactly. I dunno why you’d ever use anything but an esp for “maker stuff” at this point. They are cheaper, more capable, and have the same DX (largely, setting aside 3.3v vs 5v).

Well you might go Nordic for the power efficiency, but I agree capital-A Arduino wouldn't even cross my mind as an option these days.

Re: Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

#289

Post by matthewfcarlson »

phoehne wrote: post #55
chpatrick wrote: post #29

ESP stuff is so damn cheap and capable now I'm not sure what you would use Arduino for these days.

Don't look at just the specs. You also need to look at the board design and programming environment. I've used the ESP32 native tools and they are a lot more complex than Arduino. But I'm an embedded firmware developer, so it's kind of what I expect. But I used an Arduino, with 5V tolerant outputs, to light up Halloween costumes for years. I do it in 1 page of code that's I write in their IDE. I don't have to set up…

You can make the argument that esp32 supports Arduino but you can quickly run into “here be dragons” which sends most people for a loop. Arduino has a fantastic reputation for a very good reason.

Re: Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

#290

Post by 0x457 »

bschwindHN wrote: post #164
snitty wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet there is clearly a market for easy-to-program MCUs for hobby and educational purposes.

I would argue the RP2040/2350 fills that niche. Cheap, available, easy to program, flexible peripherals, fast enough for many projects, good documentation, and good community support.

As a hobby user, RP2040/2350 seems like the best to for beginners. As long as it's not battery powered.
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