SparkFun Forums

[Retroplayer]

I have been using AVRs for a number of years and have accumulated all the programming gear, etc... I had been hearing about the arduino and following projects for about a year now and finally decided to buy one to see what all the excitement was about. So far I have not really seen any benefit over the way I was doing it before, but maybe I am missing the point.

This post is a serious post and not meant to cause any arguments. I am simply curious about opinions from experienced arduino users about the advantages of using this system instead of the old-fashioned raw micro approach I had been using.

It is quite possible that I am just not the intended target audience for the arduino and this is just a silly question, but hopefully someone finds interest in this discussion and it does not devolve into aguing between the two camps. That was not my intention. I can fully accept that both approaches have their purposes and would like to get some insight into when an arduino would be a better application. Obviously the fact that it is all in board with the all the supporting electronics goodies is one advantage I see, but at $30+ a pop (which is a negative for me.)
Thanks to all who humor me and engage in this discussion.

[leon_heller]

The Arduino is intended for non-engineers such as artists and designers who want to add a simple embedded controller to their creations. The variant of C employed, and the extensive libraries, hide the intricacies of the language and the hardware from them.

[phalanx]

It is quite possible that I am just not the intended target audience for the arduino...

As Leon mentioned, that is exactly the case. You would probably never need the level of user frendliness it provides but it would still work as a solid development board if you ever needed it.

-Bill

[Retroplayer]

It does seem like a quick and easy setup for experimenting with new peripherals and such. How portable would the code be from prototyping on the arduino to moving it to a raw micro situation. I am thinking that the arduino might be useful in designing library code for new peripherals that I could then use in final designs. I guess that depends on how well I design the code (scary thought, since I am not mainly a software guy.)

[leon_heller]

You can simply put the AVR with the Arduino code in it into your own hardware. Or dispense with the Arduino software and use standard AVR code with the Arduino hardware. The boards include an ISP connector for a Dragon or whatever.

I forgot to mention what I consider is a shortcoming of the Arduino software - there is no debug facility.

I got a Duemilanove board, and a Uno, out of curiosity.

[gedion_ki]

Retro,

I'm a software engineer by trade and up until a couple years ago I only had a theoretical understanding of the hardware. The Arduino was really helpful in getting me into projects with a working board and it feels a bit more like the more familiar PC platform where I can add components or sensors to the board.

Now that I have some electronics knowledge I'm considering Pro Arduinos for new projects because I want to have more control over the design of the end result. You might want to look at the Pros simply because the price is around the 19$ range, it gives you a solid starting point and it seems more flexible for building into a more permanent project.

[Retroplayer]

I got a Duemilanove board, and a Uno, out of curiosity.

That's pretty much why I got one. Plus it was practically free since I used my freeday money to pick it up. I got the Uno. Just trying to wrap my mind around it, since it is a little different environment than I am used to.

[Retroplayer]

Retro,

I'm a software engineer by trade and up until a couple years ago I only had a theoretical understanding of the hardware. The Arduino was really helpful in getting me into projects with a working board and it feels a bit more like the more familiar PC platform where I can add components or sensors to the board.

Now that I have some electronics knowledge I'm considering Pro Arduinos for new projects because I want to have more control over the design of the end result. You might want to look at the Pros simply because the price is around the 19$ range, it gives you a solid starting point and it seems more flexible for building into a more permanent project.

Speaking of that, when I was first following the arduino, I seem to recall some IDE for it that looked like a graphical interface that you just connected blocks together and it designed the code for you. Anyone have any idea what I am talking about? It looked like boxes that you just dropped in and connected together. Sound familiar?

[rmteo1]

Similar concept, but a lot more grunt. http://www.sparkfun.com/products/9564

[gedion_ki]

Retro,

I remember this too so I did a quick google and this looks to be the tools I remember seeing. http://www.dimeb.de/eduwear Looks like the actual tool is called Amici. It looks like it's only available for Windows and Mac, a bummer if you happen to be a *nix user but probably covers most people interested.

[stevech]

An engineering type Arduino hobbyist would either have to write his/her own libraries or just use the hardware and not the C++ libraries - which IMO are not suitable to many needs, e.g., the UART transmit library, unknowable to the typical Arduino user, has a busy-loop for Transmit but buffered/interrupt driven for input. And so on.

But for it's audience, Arduino is amazingly popular. It's also funny that the hardware is so popular that Arduino-compatible daughter-cards (shields, they call them) exist for ARM and PIC CPU boards built to the de facto Arduino mechanical/electrical specs.

[PointBlank017]

Retro,

I'm a software engineer by trade and up until a couple years ago I only had a theoretical understanding of the hardware. The Arduino was really helpful in getting me into projects with a working board and it feels a bit more like the more familiar PC platform where I can add components or sensors to the board.

Now that I have some electronics knowledge I'm considering Pro Arduinos for new projects because I want to have more control over the design of the end result. You might want to look at the Pros simply because the price is around the 19$ range, it gives you a solid starting point and it seems more flexible for building into a more permanent project.

Speaking of that, when I was first following the arduino, I seem to recall some IDE for it that looked like a graphical interface that you just connected blocks together and it designed the code for you. Anyone have any idea what I am talking about? It looked like boxes that you just dropped in and connected together. Sound familiar?

Could it have been LabVIEW?. I've seen it used with Arduino.

[westfw]

Arduino offers many people the chance to do "interesting things" with a microcontroller, without having to first do a bunch of "uninteresting things." Definitions of "interesting things" and "uninteresting things" vary by user; the original target audience was pretty much "have your art interact with electronics bits" and "learn about programming and microcontrollers." For me, it was more along the lines of "program AVRs" and "figure out the install dance and dependency hell for operating systems that the vendor neglects."

Arduino wasn't first, isn't the most powerful on an absolute, per size, or per-dollar basis, and isn't the cheapest (though if you count clones, it comes pretty close.) It's doing a remarkable job of hitting a sweet spot combining those qualities, though.