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Arduino is considerably more expensive, sizable, and complicated than is really needed for a finished home hacker project. Additionally, size does matter (sorry

by nupark 16y ago

Arduino is considerably more expensive, sizable, and complicated than is really needed for a finished home hacker project. Additionally, size does matter (sorry :) when you're trying to fit a piece of electronics into your home in an unobtrusive way. You don't need a full Arduino to wirelessly enable (802.15.4+ZigBee or 6LoWPAN!) a simple device. You just need the MCU (and the tiny family may be sufficient - $2-5) and the wireless hardware (eg, xbee, or one of Atmel's new combined atmega+802.15.4 chipsets if you can deal with the antenna requirements - $8 - $30), an optional crystal oscillator (<$1), and -- if necessary -- a power source (eg, some batteries). As for commercial applications -- I'd expect them to use wireless, and my money is on either straight WiFi (especially for something as large as a fridge), or 802.15.4 and 6LoWPAN (especially for smaller, low-power devices).

bigiain 16y ago
That's all true, but for _me_, the Arduino is invaluable for making it easy to go through the many iterations of hardware prototype and software I need before I decide on the final form (or, more commonly, give up on it as not-as-good-an-idea-as-I-first-thought). If/when I get to a stage where I think I've got a "version 1.0", I'll sometimes (if space really is an issue - in my projects that's usually because I'm trying to fit it inside a small RC plane) reduce it to a 168 or 328 in a minimal-external-component configuration. Often though, an Arduino mini (or even a full sized Arduino) is perfectly fine. If I ever thought I was going to build dozens or hundreds of something I'd designed, the ~$30 for an Arduino Mini might become an issue, but for my style of homebuilt projects the money spent on a Mini is often a good tradeoff between my money and my time.
- nupark 16y ago
  That's all true, but for _me_, the Arduino is invaluable for making it easy to go through the many iterations of hardware prototype and software I need before I decide on the final form (or, more commonly, give up on it as not-as-good-an-idea-as-I-first-thought). Arduino is an OK development board, but it does constrain your final deployment choices. I use Atmel's STK600 development platform for the same purpose; the STK600 is their modern development board and supports just about every MCU available via (relatively) cheap routing/socket cards. They've got a have a programmable clock generator, adjustable VCC, switches/LEDs/etc, as well as support for ISP programming such that I can burn bootloaders, and high voltage programming if I happen to screw that up. I can quickly iterate on a design while using an STK600 to prototype, and I'm not constrained by Arduino's hardware/bootloader/MCU requirements, especially in relation to clock speed and power consumption -- something that I would assume matters a lot on RC planes. Plus, since the STK600 supports the full line of Atmel microcontrollers, you can specialize for the task at hand, be it USB or wireless. If I ever thought I was going to build dozens or hundreds of something I'd designed, the ~$30 for an Arduino Mini might become an issue, but for my style of homebuilt projects the money spent on a Mini is often a good tradeoff between my money and my time. I'll admit that the nice thing about the Arduino Mini for deployment is that it's a very accessible (and small sized) package; off the shelf, most people won't want to deal with SMT and would have a hard time building something as small.

by nupark 16y ago

bigiain 16y ago

That's all true, but for _me_, the Arduino is invaluable for making it easy to go through the many iterations of hardware prototype and software I need before I decide on the final form (or, more commonly, give up on it as not-as-good-an-idea-as-I-first-thought). If/when I get to a stage where I think I've got a "version 1.0", I'll sometimes (if space really is an issue - in my projects that's usually because I'm trying to fit it inside a small RC plane) reduce it to a 168 or 328 in a minimal-external-component configuration. Often though, an Arduino mini (or even a full sized Arduino) is perfectly fine. If I ever thought I was going to build dozens or hundreds of something I'd designed, the ~$30 for an Arduino Mini might become an issue, but for my style of homebuilt projects the money spent on a Mini is often a good tradeoff between my money and my time.

nupark 16y ago
That's all true, but for _me_, the Arduino is invaluable for making it easy to go through the many iterations of hardware prototype and software I need before I decide on the final form (or, more commonly, give up on it as not-as-good-an-idea-as-I-first-thought). Arduino is an OK development board, but it does constrain your final deployment choices. I use Atmel's STK600 development platform for the same purpose; the STK600 is their modern development board and supports just about every MCU available via (relatively) cheap routing/socket cards. They've got a have a programmable clock generator, adjustable VCC, switches/LEDs/etc, as well as support for ISP programming such that I can burn bootloaders, and high voltage programming if I happen to screw that up. I can quickly iterate on a design while using an STK600 to prototype, and I'm not constrained by Arduino's hardware/bootloader/MCU requirements, especially in relation to clock speed and power consumption -- something that I would assume matters a lot on RC planes. Plus, since the STK600 supports the full line of Atmel microcontrollers, you can specialize for the task at hand, be it USB or wireless. If I ever thought I was going to build dozens or hundreds of something I'd designed, the ~$30 for an Arduino Mini might become an issue, but for my style of homebuilt projects the money spent on a Mini is often a good tradeoff between my money and my time. I'll admit that the nice thing about the Arduino Mini for deployment is that it's a very accessible (and small sized) package; off the shelf, most people won't want to deal with SMT and would have a hard time building something as small.