arduino

[wb4jfi at knology.net]

First of all, it appears that hams (somewhere) are using almost every type of inexpensive dev board that’s out there.  Whether Arduino, Pi, STM32F4, MSP430, Beaglebone, etc, there are hams using them for something.  Look at the hardware and select what can handle your projects, and potential future projects.  Then look at the IDE and see if it is acceptable to use (what OS, language, etc).

I’m playing with Arduinos, Raspberry Pis, Spartan FPGAs, and starting STM32, etc.  Each can do certain things well.  If you want a Pi, I suggest you check with Newark/Element 14.  They have had Pis in stock every time I needed one.

So far, I have three Unos, one Mega2560, and one Due, along with various shields.  I also have three Raspberry Pis, two STM32F4 Discovery’s, a TI eZDSP, multiple MSP430s, some dsPICs, three Digilent Nexys2, and many other Xilinx Spartan-3 FPGA boards, several PIC boards, plus a variety of other things that I haven’t messed with in a while.  They ALL have ham projects that I have seen.

Having said all that, don’t dilute your work.  As someone pointed out, we all have a limited amount of time.  Focus on what you want to learn and do, and build a plan to success.  Don’t do a little here, then a little there – that is my biggest problem.  I personally would focus on the C language (or C++) for example, as it is available on almost all platforms. Python seems real popular on the Pi, but not on most f the other small boards. 

Second, I think that including Windows patching is a red herring.  Arduino and Spartan IDE (for example) are available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.  The Pi runs Linux natively.  I get a LOT of patches for my various Linux machines as well anymore, including the Pi.  Plus, anyone that runs Windows on an Internet-accessible must keep up with patches, whether they run a development IDE or not on that Windows machine or not.  Time to load patches has nothing to do with using a development environment.  Except for any patches to that IDE, which are often required across platforms.  

Linux patching can also cause some real problems.  I’ve seen Linux patches that may fix some obscure security hole, but also BREAK something basic, which can take hours or days to resolve.  Linux is NOT the Utopia that some gurus would like you to believe.  If you do Linux every day, and become a Linux-Wizard, then you are probably fine.  If you are an occasional Linux user (and especially if you don’t have an EXCELLENT memory), you can spend significant time trying to sort stuff out.  Linux on the Pi is a new thing, and has growing pains right now, but is great in that many of the older ham Linux patches build just fine on the Pi.

I don’t want this to degenerate into an OS war.  There are strong pluses and minuses with all popular operating systems.  I have several versions of Windows and Linux, and an OSX machine.  I love all three, and hate all three, depending on the frustration level of the moment.  None of them are nearly as good as CP/M.  Kidding...

Terry, WB4JFI


From: Alex Fraser 
Sent: Friday, March 22, 2013 11:16 AM
To: tacos at amrad.org 
Subject: Re: arduino

Very timely.  I just was looking at Raspberry Pi on adafruit.  Which one of these gadgets are hams using?  Where is the best place to buy?

It's just plain fun buying stuff on line.  You wait a couple of days and it just appears in your mailbox.  It's like a slow Startrek transporter.

Rob Seastrom wrote: 
Alberto di Bene mailto:dibene at usa.net writes:

Duuh, I didn't intend to ruin your love affair with Arduino. My goal
was just that of alerting all those interested, and willing to spend
just a couple of minutes more after having plugged it in an USB port
under Windows, after having loaded the provided drivers, to start
the (free) toolchain to code just a few lines in C to say "Hello" to
the world...
You need to include the time to load and patch Windows in this whole
equation.  That's a major prerequisite around here.  I'm partial to
platform independent dev environments.

Better yet, why not take Terry's "more is always better" argument to
its logical conclusion and only use embedded systems that can
self-host their development environments?  That sure saves a lot of
hassle!

pi at raspberrypi ~ $ uname -a
Linux raspberrypi 3.1.9adafruit+ #10 PREEMPT Thu Aug 30 20:07:05 EDT 2012 armv6l GNU/Linux
pi at raspberrypi ~ $ gcc -Wall hello.c -o hello
pi at raspberrypi ~ $ ./hello
hello world!
pi at raspberrypi ~ $ python --version
Python 2.7.3rc2
pi at raspberrypi ~ $ git version
git version 1.7.10.4
pi at raspberrypi ~ $ 

-r




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