16 ms·

Teagueduino 0.1: Arduino just got a whole lot easier

66 points by akumpf 15y ago

reustle 15y ago
The universal connectors were inevitable. I love it. I really hope I can override that dropdown based code editor though. What's the point if They need to insert {'s and }'s anyway?
- akumpf 15y ago
  It also supports keyboard navigation (which make writing code a bit faster than just point-and-click dropdown), but I'm totally with you. We'll definitely need to look into other input methods to speed things up as the user gets comfortable with the syntax.
devindotcom 15y ago
Nice. This goes a long way towards making the platform accessible to real non-coders, or kids even. I'm reposting this on CrunchGear, thanks for putting it up.
jrockway 15y ago
What about the opposite end of the spectrum? Say I'm comfortable with avr-gcc and I took half of an electrical engineering major in college: what environment and hardware should I use instead of Arduino? (I've looked at the AVR stuff on sparkfun before, and it is expensive and crappy compared to Arduino. I've built stuff with the Teensy. But I really want the ability to cheaply "mass produce" if necessary, but don't want to build everything myself.)
- angusgr 15y ago
  One environment you might want to try is MHVLib http://www.makehackvoid.com/mhvlib http://www.makehackvoid.com/mhvlib - an efficiency oriented C++ library for AVR microcontrollers with a fair amount of out-of-the-box functionality. (Disclaimer: it was developed by fellow Hackerspace co-founders, however I personally haven't used it for anything yet in my hobby projects. To date I've either used Arduino for its fall-off-a-log simplicity, or plain avr-libc for simple Teensy programs. The one time to date I have been pressed for performance I just included some inline AVR assembly code in my Arduino sketch. But I'm a microcontroller lightweight.) I really want the ability to cheaply "mass produce" if necessary, but don't want to build everything myself If you want to actually mass produce a finished product from a development board prototype (Arduino, Teensy, whatever) then you'll probably want to prototype first, then redesign your own board around an appropriate AVR chip and get the board fabbed (probably through a few iterations.) IMHO this means you can use pretty much any development board in the prototyping stage.
- fleitz 15y ago
  There aren't any easy answers with out first knowing the volume you'd potentially want to scale to and the end cost of the hardware. If you want to produce consumer devices there is the whole headache of molding etc. I'd honestly focus on making something cool with arduino (think ruby) and then when you need to mass produce go create custom PCBs. (think C++) The nice thing about the current environment is that kickstarter LOVES hardware projects, so you could quite likely crowdfund the scaling of your design.
- bigiain 15y ago
  If you want to use avr-gcc and emacs(or vi) & unix as your "environment", there's nothing to stop you doing that and still using Arduino hardware - it's just a ATmega328 on a board with a bunch of required/useful stuff (clock, power regulator, usb, handy "breakput" pins...), which happens to have a bootloader which you can ignore. If you're interested and capable of writing your own gcc compiled executables into the chip, you can do so, and for some of us, the ease of not having to "set up" the supporting hardware for the microcontroller is a great advantage. There are alternatives if your idea requires more "whatever" than an AT328 (or a Mega2560) there are lots of other (perhaps less well known) options, but consider using the Arduino hardware when it's suitable, even if you don't want the "handholding" of the Arduino IDE. (Or, like me, let the ease of use that "handholding" gives you allow you to significantly lower the bar of entry to trying out random crazy ideas - I'll often grab an arduino and plug in some sensors/leds/servos/whatever, and sit on the couch in the evening seeing is a crazy idea is likely to work, rather than just thinking about it and never trying anything out...)
  - bigiain 15y ago
    Heres a project I read about recently that uses a Parallax Propellor to get high speed multi core computing out of a micro controller project - I'll probably give one of these a whirl if/when I need more cpu horsepower than I can get out of the regular line of Arduino hardware: http://scanlime.org/2011/04/spdif-digital-audio-on-a-microcontroller/ http://scanlime.org/2011/04/spdif-digital-audio-on-a-microco...
- pygy_ 15y ago
  Yet another suggestion: the teensy, which has similar specs, but a smaller form factor, native USB support (last time I checked, Arduino used a USB - RS232 adapter), and more pins (for the teensy++ version). http://www.pjrc.com/teensy/ http://www.pjrc.com/teensy/ A drawback is that the form factor isn't compatible with the Arduino shields (hardware extensions).
- inoop 15y ago
  I use Eclipse and CDT. Really comfortable although Eclipse has a bit of a steep learning curve. As for hardware, you'll have to be more specific about you want to do with it. edit: now that I come to think of it, have a look at http://code.google.com/p/micropendous/ http://code.google.com/p/micropendous/. I don't know why not more people use USB for microcontroller programming. It's a really easy system to work with and you support more hardware over USB than through Arduino shields and at a fraction of the cost. Bluetooth, Ethernet (CDC), keyboards/mice, and Audio devices can all be picked up from places like dealextreme for mere dollars (including shipping:), and the protocols are all well-documented standards.
fleitz 15y ago
Interesting, I wonder if it's possible to extend this to Netduino.
- akumpf 15y ago
  I don't see why it wouldn't work. The protocol spec is listed in the post. You just need to have enough EEPROM to store the instructions. The Teagueduino code editor will try to communicate with whatever serial port you specify, so if you're willing to build a realtime interpreter for Netduino (actually much easier than it sounds) it should work just fine. Check out the Teensy/Arduino firmware code (also in the post) as a starting point.
limmeau 15y ago
Is this a reinvention of the PLC with nicer plugs?
leon_ 15y ago
A little rant about the beginner's tutorials for the Arduino: I'm trying (or was trying) to get into the Arduino/electronics stuff but by far my biggest problem is not the super easy subset of C++ they use in their IDE (hell, most of the time you don't need pointers) but the electronics stuff. Pushdown/Pullup/Voltage dividers, RC circuits, etc. All that fundamental electronics stuff is never discussed in depth. They give you a circuit schematic with let's say a voltage divider and a temperature sensor and tell you: "That's the schematic and that's how you do it. That thing on the left is called a voltage divider. It divides voltage. And now for the hard part: for-loops and Serial.println()" Is there no beginner stuff for people who know how to code but are puzzled by the electronics part? Where they explain you why you have to put a voltage divider into the circuit and what it exactly does. Maybe I'm just ultra stupid and all the other people reading those tutorials get an instant grasp of the circuits used and are really hold back by for-loops and curly braces. Or my method is just wrong and I shouldn't try to understand everything. Just copy circuits found on the internet and be happy? (Yes, I'm reading electronics textbooks - sadly they are not that easy to understand for casual learning on the weekends.)
- timclark 15y ago
  What level are you looking at? Is the content of something like this http://www.makershed.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=9780596153748 http://www.makershed.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=9780... too simple?
  - leon_ 15y ago
    I got my "enlightenment" some time ago - I think I understand now the very basics of electronics. But my fundamental problem was to understand why circuits were built the way they were. Like the example of the thermic resistor used to measure room temperature. At first I had no idea why the out line to the controller's pin had to be put between 2 resistors (one being the sensor). The tutorial I followed mentioned only that it's called a voltage divider - but that was it. (In hindsight this is really a most basic concept - but at that time it was confusing to me.) I read a few books on that subject since then but playing with http://www.falstad.com/circuit/ http://www.falstad.com/circuit/ ultimately helped me the most. I just wish there were some simple explanations of these concepts. (As simple as explaining the basics of programming.)
mhb 15y ago
Looks nice. Is it for sale?
- akumpf 15y ago
  Not yet (we're looking into it). The response from the community for Teagueduino has been great so far. Thanks!

66 points by akumpf 15y ago

The universal connectors were inevitable. I love it. I really hope I can override that dropdown based code editor though. What's the point if They need to insert {'s and }'s anyway?

akumpf 15y ago
It also supports keyboard navigation (which make writing code a bit faster than just point-and-click dropdown), but I'm totally with you. We'll definitely need to look into other input methods to speed things up as the user gets comfortable with the syntax.

devindotcom 15y ago

Nice. This goes a long way towards making the platform accessible to real non-coders, or kids even. I'm reposting this on CrunchGear, thanks for putting it up.

jrockway 15y ago

What about the opposite end of the spectrum? Say I'm comfortable with avr-gcc and I took half of an electrical engineering major in college: what environment and hardware should I use instead of Arduino? (I've looked at the AVR stuff on sparkfun before, and it is expensive and crappy compared to Arduino. I've built stuff with the Teensy. But I really want the ability to cheaply "mass produce" if necessary, but don't want to build everything myself.)

angusgr 15y ago
One environment you might want to try is MHVLib http://www.makehackvoid.com/mhvlib http://www.makehackvoid.com/mhvlib - an efficiency oriented C++ library for AVR microcontrollers with a fair amount of out-of-the-box functionality. (Disclaimer: it was developed by fellow Hackerspace co-founders, however I personally haven't used it for anything yet in my hobby projects. To date I've either used Arduino for its fall-off-a-log simplicity, or plain avr-libc for simple Teensy programs. The one time to date I have been pressed for performance I just included some inline AVR assembly code in my Arduino sketch. But I'm a microcontroller lightweight.) I really want the ability to cheaply "mass produce" if necessary, but don't want to build everything myself If you want to actually mass produce a finished product from a development board prototype (Arduino, Teensy, whatever) then you'll probably want to prototype first, then redesign your own board around an appropriate AVR chip and get the board fabbed (probably through a few iterations.) IMHO this means you can use pretty much any development board in the prototyping stage.
fleitz 15y ago
There aren't any easy answers with out first knowing the volume you'd potentially want to scale to and the end cost of the hardware. If you want to produce consumer devices there is the whole headache of molding etc. I'd honestly focus on making something cool with arduino (think ruby) and then when you need to mass produce go create custom PCBs. (think C++) The nice thing about the current environment is that kickstarter LOVES hardware projects, so you could quite likely crowdfund the scaling of your design.
bigiain 15y ago
If you want to use avr-gcc and emacs(or vi) & unix as your "environment", there's nothing to stop you doing that and still using Arduino hardware - it's just a ATmega328 on a board with a bunch of required/useful stuff (clock, power regulator, usb, handy "breakput" pins...), which happens to have a bootloader which you can ignore. If you're interested and capable of writing your own gcc compiled executables into the chip, you can do so, and for some of us, the ease of not having to "set up" the supporting hardware for the microcontroller is a great advantage. There are alternatives if your idea requires more "whatever" than an AT328 (or a Mega2560) there are lots of other (perhaps less well known) options, but consider using the Arduino hardware when it's suitable, even if you don't want the "handholding" of the Arduino IDE. (Or, like me, let the ease of use that "handholding" gives you allow you to significantly lower the bar of entry to trying out random crazy ideas - I'll often grab an arduino and plug in some sensors/leds/servos/whatever, and sit on the couch in the evening seeing is a crazy idea is likely to work, rather than just thinking about it and never trying anything out...)
- bigiain 15y ago
  Heres a project I read about recently that uses a Parallax Propellor to get high speed multi core computing out of a micro controller project - I'll probably give one of these a whirl if/when I need more cpu horsepower than I can get out of the regular line of Arduino hardware: http://scanlime.org/2011/04/spdif-digital-audio-on-a-microcontroller/ http://scanlime.org/2011/04/spdif-digital-audio-on-a-microco...
pygy_ 15y ago
Yet another suggestion: the teensy, which has similar specs, but a smaller form factor, native USB support (last time I checked, Arduino used a USB - RS232 adapter), and more pins (for the teensy++ version). http://www.pjrc.com/teensy/ http://www.pjrc.com/teensy/ A drawback is that the form factor isn't compatible with the Arduino shields (hardware extensions).
inoop 15y ago
I use Eclipse and CDT. Really comfortable although Eclipse has a bit of a steep learning curve. As for hardware, you'll have to be more specific about you want to do with it. edit: now that I come to think of it, have a look at http://code.google.com/p/micropendous/ http://code.google.com/p/micropendous/. I don't know why not more people use USB for microcontroller programming. It's a really easy system to work with and you support more hardware over USB than through Arduino shields and at a fraction of the cost. Bluetooth, Ethernet (CDC), keyboards/mice, and Audio devices can all be picked up from places like dealextreme for mere dollars (including shipping:), and the protocols are all well-documented standards.

fleitz 15y ago

Interesting, I wonder if it's possible to extend this to Netduino.

akumpf 15y ago
I don't see why it wouldn't work. The protocol spec is listed in the post. You just need to have enough EEPROM to store the instructions. The Teagueduino code editor will try to communicate with whatever serial port you specify, so if you're willing to build a realtime interpreter for Netduino (actually much easier than it sounds) it should work just fine. Check out the Teensy/Arduino firmware code (also in the post) as a starting point.

limmeau 15y ago

Is this a reinvention of the PLC with nicer plugs?

leon_ 15y ago

A little rant about the beginner's tutorials for the Arduino: I'm trying (or was trying) to get into the Arduino/electronics stuff but by far my biggest problem is not the super easy subset of C++ they use in their IDE (hell, most of the time you don't need pointers) but the electronics stuff. Pushdown/Pullup/Voltage dividers, RC circuits, etc. All that fundamental electronics stuff is never discussed in depth. They give you a circuit schematic with let's say a voltage divider and a temperature sensor and tell you: "That's the schematic and that's how you do it. That thing on the left is called a voltage divider. It divides voltage. And now for the hard part: for-loops and Serial.println()" Is there no beginner stuff for people who know how to code but are puzzled by the electronics part? Where they explain you why you have to put a voltage divider into the circuit and what it exactly does. Maybe I'm just ultra stupid and all the other people reading those tutorials get an instant grasp of the circuits used and are really hold back by for-loops and curly braces. Or my method is just wrong and I shouldn't try to understand everything. Just copy circuits found on the internet and be happy? (Yes, I'm reading electronics textbooks - sadly they are not that easy to understand for casual learning on the weekends.)

timclark 15y ago
What level are you looking at? Is the content of something like this http://www.makershed.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=9780596153748 http://www.makershed.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=9780... too simple?
- leon_ 15y ago
  I got my "enlightenment" some time ago - I think I understand now the very basics of electronics. But my fundamental problem was to understand why circuits were built the way they were. Like the example of the thermic resistor used to measure room temperature. At first I had no idea why the out line to the controller's pin had to be put between 2 resistors (one being the sensor). The tutorial I followed mentioned only that it's called a voltage divider - but that was it. (In hindsight this is really a most basic concept - but at that time it was confusing to me.) I read a few books on that subject since then but playing with http://www.falstad.com/circuit/ http://www.falstad.com/circuit/ ultimately helped me the most. I just wish there were some simple explanations of these concepts. (As simple as explaining the basics of programming.)

mhb 15y ago

Looks nice. Is it for sale?

akumpf 15y ago
Not yet (we're looking into it). The response from the community for Teagueduino has been great so far. Thanks!