Arduino starter kits

[WB4JFI]

Guys,
I have to say that I agree with Alberto on this.  Arduinos are NOT the answer to everything.

My best answer to this discussion is to select the best tool for the job.  If all that you want to do is something simple, a simple tool will do.  If you want to build something  more complicated, a simple tool won’t do.  It’s that simple.

I have a pretty heavy investment in Arduinos and related accessories.  I have at least ten Unos, two Mega 2560, several smaller versions of the Uno, a Due, and MANY shields and various LCD displays.  I have a lot of projects based on Arduinos.  There is several hundreds of dollars investment just in Arduinos here.

But, the Arduino is VERY limited.  I have hit memory limitations, speed limitations, data accuracy limitations, and other problems with Arduinos several times.  If you want to do something more sophisticated (SDR, audio processing, etc), the “traditional” Arduinos, such as the Uno, just don’t have the power.  IT IS THAT SIMPLE!

If you are looking for something to learn embedded programming on, and not a specific project, the Arduino is a good platform.  If you have a simple controller project, the Arduino MAY be a good platform. Or not.

There are a LOT of amateur radio-related projects that are beyond a Uno.  Limiting yourself to the Uno capabilities also limits what you can successfully do.

I also have several Raspberry Pis, BeagleBone Blacks, STM32 Discovery boards, quite a few Xilinx FPGA boards, a Parallella, a UDOO (thanks Mike), and several others.  The reason why I have so many devices is that one tool does not fit all needs.

What is this “wasting cycles” anyway?  Are cycles a limited resource that we need to husband?  How many carbon equivalents does each cycle use?  Should I start creating protest signs saying “Save Our Cycles!” and “Don’t Be The 1% That Wastes Cycles!”.  Are we going to a million-cycle-march in front of the UN?

I would MUCH RATHER have extra cycles available on a project.  I NEVER want to invest a lot of time trying to shoehorn a project into a hardware/software platform that is marginal or cannot do the job.

I understand that some people are not comfortable with operating systems, such as Linux.  You can either continue to shy away from it/them, and thereby stay in an ever-decreasing bubble of protection, or you can start to actually learn about the future.  You comfort zone is also your most limiting factor.

Keep It Simple Stupid is a very common comment.  If all that you want to do is KISS, all that you will ever learn to do is to KISS. hi hi
73 & Happy New Year,
Terry, WB4JFI



From: Alberto di Bene 
Sent: Monday, December 29, 2014 11:08 AM
To: Tacos 
Subject: Re: Arduino starter kits

On 12/29/2014 3:55 PM, Andre Kesteloot wrote:


  What you propose is interesting, but Arduino has many advantage when used as a dedicated state- engine: it does what you told it to do, and nothing else, and therefore does not waste cycles to perform maintenance tasks, because it does have an operating system such as Linux.

The Discovery board does not use Linux, nor any other op-sys... you program it "bare metal", as they say, in C language... 
you have complete control of every and each cycle of the CPU... I know, I used that board for prototyping the 
firmware for the Elad DUO RTX. 
It is a joy to work with, especially as the Cortex ARM M4F has a 32-bit floating point unit, essential for all
those DSP computations (FFT, FIR, etc.) needed on an SDR.

73  Alberto  I2PHD






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