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That sounds awesome – reminds me of cellular automata – but also, um, I just can't see Joe Engineer figuring that out. My first thought when I started researchi

That sounds awesome – reminds me of cellular automata – but also, um, I just can't see Joe Engineer figuring that out. My first thought when I started researching Green Arrays was that this was an amazing idea that I would love to see take off, but their UX and marketing will really get in the way. Not like that have much competition though – the entire microcontroller world is hopelessly obscure with the exception of Arduino and all of the projects that it inspired.

RodgerTheGreat 15y ago
Fortunately Chuck's already done the nasty parts and you can (presumably) leverage his upload code if you use GreenArrays' tools, but there's always the possibility that your code will require some very specific sequence of node initialization and you'll have to wade in and do it manually. I agree that this tech will probably never be mainstream. If I had an unlimited supply of free time I would be very tempted to develop some third-party devtools for GA chips- I enjoy programming in Forth and I could get used to the F18 instruction set, but using a custom keyboard layout and ditching my text editors and source control systems in favor of a block editor is pretty hard to swallow.
dkersten 15y ago
the entire microcontroller world is hopelessly obscure with the exception of Arduino and all of the projects that it inspired I dunno, it doesn't seem that bad to me. Cortex-M microcontrollers use the ARM instruction set and seem to be gaining ground. I've personally used PIC24 (the 16bit PIC microcontrollers from Microchip) and various 8bit Atmel ones without using Arduino. The 8bit PIC16 still seems reasonably popular too. Certainly none are as popular or accessible to beginners than Arduino, but is it really hopelessly obscure? Hell, if I can get started with PIC24, then surely anyone can! (Though I do admit I've started doing prototyping on Arduino lately because the wealth of sample code saves tons of time and headaches, while before the PIC24 was my go-to microcontroller. I have used the AT90USB162 and some Atmega micros for some work too and will probably use them much more in the future).

RodgerTheGreat 15y ago

Fortunately Chuck's already done the nasty parts and you can (presumably) leverage his upload code if you use GreenArrays' tools, but there's always the possibility that your code will require some very specific sequence of node initialization and you'll have to wade in and do it manually. I agree that this tech will probably never be mainstream. If I had an unlimited supply of free time I would be very tempted to develop some third-party devtools for GA chips- I enjoy programming in Forth and I could get used to the F18 instruction set, but using a custom keyboard layout and ditching my text editors and source control systems in favor of a block editor is pretty hard to swallow.

dkersten 15y ago

the entire microcontroller world is hopelessly obscure with the exception of Arduino and all of the projects that it inspired I dunno, it doesn't seem that bad to me. Cortex-M microcontrollers use the ARM instruction set and seem to be gaining ground. I've personally used PIC24 (the 16bit PIC microcontrollers from Microchip) and various 8bit Atmel ones without using Arduino. The 8bit PIC16 still seems reasonably popular too. Certainly none are as popular or accessible to beginners than Arduino, but is it really hopelessly obscure? Hell, if I can get started with PIC24, then surely anyone can! (Though I do admit I've started doing prototyping on Arduino lately because the wealth of sample code saves tons of time and headaches, while before the PIC24 was my go-to microcontroller. I have used the AT90USB162 and some Atmega micros for some work too and will probably use them much more in the future).