Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

qualcomm.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

441–450 of 553 posts

Re: Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

#441

Post by [deleted] »

xg15 wrote: post #276
MountDoom wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Arduino got obsoleted by the Raspberry Pi and its clones/compatible devices. Not entirely. Arduino was always targeted at the "casual DIY" segment - artists, school robotics clubs, and other folks who wanted automation without a steep learning curve. This was a notch below the "serious hobbyist" tier where you could save a lot of money by just buying a bare-metal version of the same chip and write some code in C (o…

> Not entirely. Arduino was always targeted at the "casual DIY" segment - artists, school robotics clubs, and other folks who wanted automation without a steep learning curve. Exactly. But my point was that this demographic would today get a more powerful and more accessible platform for their projects by buying a Raspberry Pi.

[deleted]

Re: Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

#442

Post by mrheosuper »

xg15 wrote: post #276
MountDoom wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Arduino got obsoleted by the Raspberry Pi and its clones/compatible devices. Not entirely. Arduino was always targeted at the "casual DIY" segment - artists, school robotics clubs, and other folks who wanted automation without a steep learning curve. This was a notch below the "serious hobbyist" tier where you could save a lot of money by just buying a bare-metal version of the same chip and write some code in C (o…

> Not entirely. Arduino was always targeted at the "casual DIY" segment - artists, school robotics clubs, and other folks who wanted automation without a steep learning curve. Exactly. But my point was that this demographic would today get a more powerful and more accessible platform for their projects by buying a Raspberry Pi.

They are entirely different. By Arduino, i assume you mean Arduino hardware ? They are usually just a breakout board for a given MCU.

Raspberry pi, is a full ledge computer, with boottime measured in seconds

Re: Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

#443

Post by zem »

cogman10 wrote: post #440
zem wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

as a pixel owner, i'm unfortunately paying for the operating system more than anything else. most other android phones are infested with unremovable bloatware and lack of update guarantees, and iOS is crippled by apple. I used maemo when I could, and now that I can't pixels are pretty much my only option for a decent phone.

Exactly the reason I own a pixel. Pixels get first class support by google in terms of software which means I can rock my phone for several generations before upgrading. I've owned a 2, 6, and now 9. Even though the 9 is much faster than the 2 or 6, I've reached a point where that performance difference simply doesn't matter. I'm not being held back by the CPU in any real way. That leaves security, software, and batt…

same here, got six years out of a pixel 3 and hope to get another six out of my current pixel 9. if it hadn't been for the battery life degrading I might even have hung on to the 3 for another year or two.

Re: Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

#444

Post by mrheosuper »

IshKebab wrote: post #350
palmotea wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Besides that, IMO hiding hardware details from the developer is the worst thing about Arduino. The hardware details matter and it's far too easy to get footgunned by some implementation detail hidden from you. Wasn't Arduino not for developers, but for hobbyists? People who aren't super technical but want to do something neat with basic microcontroller functionality? You're complaint kinda seems like saying "BASIC…

IMO Mbed was just as easy for hobbyists but had a far better designed API that could support professional work as well. Arduino is just badly designed. Unfortunately the Mbed guys stuck to their crap web-based IDE for waaaay too long, and when they finally realised it couldn't cut it, they pivoted to Yotto, which was a terrible Python based build too. When that failed they finally made Mbed Studio which was based on…

I really think what killed Mbed is the C++. I don't want to poison my codebase with the C++ stuff(and now you have to write wrapper for C++ if you want to use them inside your C codebase).

Re: Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

#445

Post by harrall »

xg15 wrote: post #276
MountDoom wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Arduino got obsoleted by the Raspberry Pi and its clones/compatible devices. Not entirely. Arduino was always targeted at the "casual DIY" segment - artists, school robotics clubs, and other folks who wanted automation without a steep learning curve. This was a notch below the "serious hobbyist" tier where you could save a lot of money by just buying a bare-metal version of the same chip and write some code in C (o…

> Not entirely. Arduino was always targeted at the "casual DIY" segment - artists, school robotics clubs, and other folks who wanted automation without a steep learning curve. Exactly. But my point was that this demographic would today get a more powerful and more accessible platform for their projects by buying a Raspberry Pi.

Let’s see… use the Arduino IDE, plug it in via USB, and press Upload. Your program starts on boot, every time, reliably and quickly.

OR buy an SD card, learn what the heck “writing images” is, find a spare keyboard and monitor so you can see the RPi, learn how to use Linux for your first time, figure out how to copy files between your Macbook and Linux, figure out how to setup Wi-Fi, figure out how to run a program, then restart your RPi to find that your program didn’t start on its own, then figure out the million different ways in Linux to start a program on boot, only to find it takes forever before your program starts when you plug the RPi back in, then it turns out Linux screws up your timings so your LED art project doesn’t even work…

Re: Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

#446

Post by mrheosuper »

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?

If you want a "framework", Zephyr is the only thing i can think of, that is somewhat hardware agnostic, have great software packages, and fairly widely used.

Re: Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

#447

Post by mrheosuper »

bobsomers wrote: post #170
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…

What frameworks would you recommend for new people learning about embedded systems?

Why care about framework, just use whatever vendor HAL for your MCU and be good with it

Re: Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

#448

Post by analog31 »

bluescrn wrote: post #368
MountDoom wrote: post #200

The problem is that there just isn't a whole lot of money to be made in providing hobby hardware for enthusiasts. Every time a big player gets involved, they think they can change this. A decade ago, Intel tried that back in the day with Galileo / Edison, and tellingly, they came up with the same "ideas": IoT / AI. If you're doing cheap IoT trinkets, you're never going to pay extra for a brand. You're going to buy th…

> The problem is that there just isn't a whole lot of money to be made in providing hobby hardware for enthusiasts. With Arduino, the hardware is probably the least interesting/important part. The software side is more important, providing an easy-to-use IDE and a simplified API and platform abstraction layer to make it super-easy to get started. Then there's the documentation, sample code, and community.

Indeed, at this point, there are possibly hundreds of Arduino compatible boards, and the other pieces of the puzzle are more important. Arduino is the Python of microcontroller development.

Come for the odd little microcontroller board. Stay for the community.

Post reply on HN