Arduino: The Documentary has been released.

For those that want to get one or are on the fence, I'd absolutely suggest it. It's only 30 bucks and you can get into playing with LEDs, motors and more exciting things as soon as you get it. Beautiful community, great resources. Hard to go wrong, really.

Re: Arduino: The Documentary has been released.

#5

Post by antirez » Sat, Jan 08, 2011, 4:51 PM UTC

The Arduino is absolutely cool, but the reason I recommend it is that it can be a good start to get introduced to analog electronics, that is even cooler for programmers. As after all the arduino itself for a programmer is just a small computer. Cool but nothing completely different especially if you used to write code in assember or C. But... analog programing, creating an AM receiver or transmitter, amplifying using a transistor, creating an oscillator, well, that is magic.

Re: Arduino: The Documentary has been released.

#6

Post by ajray » Sat, Jan 08, 2011, 6:56 PM UTC

I'm a student in Electrical and Computer Engineering, so Microcontrollers are bread and butter to me, but what really has amazed me about this platform is the number of non-EE's I see and help use it.

For engineers, the idea of using a wii nunchuck to control color LED's is trivial. For an artist or a design it can be world-changing. And our local arduino group does just that :-)

Re: Arduino: The Documentary has been released.

#7

Post by johnohara » Sat, Jan 08, 2011, 8:16 PM UTC

ajray wrote: post #6

I'm a student in Electrical and Computer Engineering, so Microcontrollers are bread and butter to me, but what really has amazed me about this platform is the number of non-EE's I see and help use it. For engineers, the idea of using a wii nunchuck to control color LED's is trivial. For an artist or a design it can be world-changing. And our local arduino group does just that :-)

The AVR/GCC library of pre-written routines plus the ability to easily upload "sketches" to the board makes the Arduino environment very approachable for non-propeller types.

They're doing a nice job and deserve the positive recognition.

Here in the U.S., SparkFun and BDMicro have built nice niches in this market.

SparkFun's Pick and Place Machine: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tn0EKtLOVx4