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I'm going to nitpick a little bit about the Arduino. Just to be clear, I won an Arduino and love it, but the article misrepresents it a little bit. It states t

I'm going to nitpick a little bit about the Arduino. Just to be clear, I won an Arduino and love it, but the article misrepresents it a little bit. It states that the Arduino is a microcontroller. This is false. From the Arduino website: > Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. The Arduino is an entire prototyping platform. It includes software which makes it easy to use, and it includes a lot of extra peripherals that make it more expensive. In the professional realm, Arduinos are not that popular. They're just too expensive. The microcontroller that the Arduino uses costs a few dollars, which is a tiny fraction of $30 for the whole board. Any professional will be comfortable enough to just program a basic microcontroller and build the small amount of circuitry to power it.

cool-RR 16y ago
Thanks for the corrections, I edited the article a bit. (I'm still comfortable calling the Arduino a "microcontroller with some software included" since this is what Wikipedia is calling it.)
- edderly 16y ago
  Whilst fixing that I might also point out that the processor on Beagleboard isn't a microcontroller either. The memory is external, it typically runs HLOSs etc. etc.
follower 16y ago
> In the professional realm, Arduinos are not that popular. They're just too expensive. It seemed to me the comparison in the article was more toward something like an ARM-based platform. In my opinion a large part of the success is the combination of price (compared to $100+ microcontroller development boards) and accessiblity (a mostly out-of-box tool chain and set of libraries). > The microcontroller that the Arduino uses costs a few dollars, which is a tiny fraction of $30 for the whole board. Keep in mind that part of the cost of the board is "sustainable development" due to it being produced in Italy with apparently known labour practices.
lwhi 16y ago
+1 The Arduino is basically a prototyping platform, which makes use of an Atmel microprocessor - namely the ATmega range (ATmega8, ATmega168, ATmega328 etc..) The Arduino _isn't_ a microprocessor - a microprocessor is placed into an Arduino board. The Arduino provides a way to interface with the microprocessor (via hardware ports, and a software interface).

cool-RR 16y ago

Thanks for the corrections, I edited the article a bit. (I'm still comfortable calling the Arduino a "microcontroller with some software included" since this is what Wikipedia is calling it.)

edderly 16y ago
Whilst fixing that I might also point out that the processor on Beagleboard isn't a microcontroller either. The memory is external, it typically runs HLOSs etc. etc.

follower 16y ago

> In the professional realm, Arduinos are not that popular. They're just too expensive. It seemed to me the comparison in the article was more toward something like an ARM-based platform. In my opinion a large part of the success is the combination of price (compared to $100+ microcontroller development boards) and accessiblity (a mostly out-of-box tool chain and set of libraries). > The microcontroller that the Arduino uses costs a few dollars, which is a tiny fraction of $30 for the whole board. Keep in mind that part of the cost of the board is "sustainable development" due to it being produced in Italy with apparently known labour practices.

lwhi 16y ago

+1 The Arduino is basically a prototyping platform, which makes use of an Atmel microprocessor - namely the ATmega range (ATmega8, ATmega168, ATmega328 etc..) The Arduino _isn't_ a microprocessor - a microprocessor is placed into an Arduino board. The Arduino provides a way to interface with the microprocessor (via hardware ports, and a software interface).