[ARDUINO]

[Karl W4KRL]

Rob,

 

I second your opinion. Good engineering uses only the resources that are
needed for the worst case solution to the problem. There are many design
challenges that can only be met with processors more powerful than the
Arduino. On the other hand, the Arduino is beautifully suited to most ham
projects that will actually get designed and built. You can buy the Arduino
starter kit at Radio Shack today over lunch today and have it running in a
few minutes. That is not yet true for most of the "better" XYZ brands. Note
the comparison between the Arduino and the Apollo 11 Guidance Computer. The
Arduino runs rings around it so it would be more than sufficient to land a
man on the moon and return him safely to earth. (Supposing we had a big
enough rocket, of course.) 

 

I'm not advocating that we keep things primitive, but I think that using the
easiest platform to buy, learn, program, and interface will be more likely
to spark greater interest among a larger community of hams. 

 

In general, we should not criticize the design approaches taken by other
hams. Paul, W4RI, says it better than I could in his "Rule of Amateur Radio
Progress".

"Progress is made in Amateur Radio by letting energetic individuals move
forward. Conversely, nothing in Amateur Radio is accomplished by complaining
about other individual's projects. Simple summary: If you don't like their
project, then go do or support your own choices."

 

http://www.k0nr.com/blog/2008/01/paul-rinaldos-rule-of-amateur-radio.html

 

73 Karl W4KRL

 


 

Apollo 11

Arduino UNO


Clock

1.024

16

MHz


RAM

2

32 + 2

KB


ROM

32

1

KB


Word

16

8

bits


Power

55

1.2

W


Weight

32

0.07

kg


App. Lang.

assembly

C++

 


Famous Error codes

404 & 1202

compiler complaints


Display 

relay driven 7-segment EL

240x320 TFT LCD


Input

19 buttons

resistive touch screen

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Rob Seastrom [mailto:rs at seastrom.com] 
Sent: Thursday, March 21, 2013 11:00 AM
To: Alberto di Bene
Cc: tacos at amrad.org
Subject: Re: arduino

 

 

With all due respect to the folks who say "$PLATFORM is better than Arduino,
you should skip the arduino and buy X or Y", you're rather missing the
point.

 

I've had encounters with a few embedded microcontrollers and SOCs.  If you
don't know what you're doing, getting JTAG, ISP, or however they want to be
programmed up and running is non-trivial.  Good luck on non-Windows
platforms, and a lot of the time the dev kit is spendy too.

 

The thing that the Arduino has going for it above all is that it's pretty
plug-and-chug; getting to "Hello World" is a 5 minute operation, and it's
something that a bright 10 year old can do without help (I've seen it
firsthand).

 

There are plenty of libraries to do a lot of useful stuff, making it fairly
accessible.  Again, well within the grasp of bright and so-inclined
preteens.

 

A lot of applications don't need the higher end stuff, particularly stuff
that's quick and dirty or decorative.  A friend of mine who does embedded
stuff for a living grabbed an Arduino a couple of years ago to drive the
blinkenlights on his son's robot costume for Halloween.

 

In other words, the Arduino, while limited, is highly useful for its
intended entry level application.  Having the discussion turn into an
enumeration of our favorite platforms that are more capable in some way or
another is a bit of a distraction and smacks of editor or OS wars.

 

my $0.02

 

-r

 

 

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