5 ms·

Usb size Arduino board

5 points by cleverjake 14y ago

astrodust 14y ago
I caught a lot of flack for complaining that the blink device (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thingm/blink1-the-usb-rgb-led http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thingm/blink1-the-usb-rg...) was too expensive, and this just proves it. $21 for two of these things? They're a lot more sophisticated than a USB-connected LED, right? Sold.
- zokier 14y ago
  Depending how much you value miniaturization, these things aren't still super-cheap. TI sold MSP430 launchpad boards for $4.30 (probably at a loss though). ST sells STM32F4 discovery board for $15, which is way more powerful. edit: Just checked, ST has also cheaper discovery boards, eg STM32F0 at $8.
jgrahamc 14y ago
This is very nice. I've used Arduino Pro in a few projects (some listed here: http://jgc.org/labs.html http://jgc.org/labs.html) and this would have made a good alternative. It has a nice combination of features: USB (no need for external FTDI cable), ability to use external power and has own regular (so can battery power it), and 6 I/O ports.
- microtherion 14y ago
  For the price, it certainly looks like a good deal. However, the ATtiny85 only has 8K flash, so using 2K of that for a boot loader is a fairly significant limitation. I'm also curious about the "6 I/O ports" (and have asked the developers a question about it). I'm far from an expert on the matter, but I was under the impression that you could only reuse the RESET pin if you were willing to give up the ability to reprogram the chip in-system.
  - freehunter 14y ago
    I didn't see it on first glance at the Kickstarter page, but I know Arduino has more than 6 pins and more than 3 PWM pins. I have to wonder how compatible this will be with projects that can work on Arduino but might not be able to fit on Digispark. *edit - obviously it won't be, I'm just wondering out loud what kind of projects a user of this board would be unknowingly locking themselves out of when they assume "Arduino-capable" means they can fit that cool RFID project onto an $8 board.
    - microtherion 14y ago
      I'd think that the Arduino community is pretty good at estimating their pin & memory needs, and the Arduino IDE handles the ATtiny85 just fine (Something that is, I believe, not true for something like the ATtiny10). The biggest compatibility issue may be timers (each model has a different # of timers with different capabilities).
      - freehunter 14y ago
        I guess my main concern is the amount of projects I see online where I think "man that's cool, I'm going to try to build that". These projects will tell you what pins you need if you read through them, but the various other incompatibilities (memory and timers being ones already called out) might not be fully realized until you've gotten some way into the build. The beauty of Arduino is that you don't need an EE degree to make a project. Of course, these complaints can be leveraged to any fork of a project, I'm just throwing them out there. For what it's worth, I pledged $28 to get three of these, and am currently wondering if I maybe should have pledged for five. On the other hand, I'm mentally comparing the projects I have in my scrapbook that may or may not translate to this new board.
digistump 14y ago
Thanks everyone for the great feedback and for the support! Our pricing is as low as we can get it (US assembly of SMT boards can be expensive!), and we did that because we wanted to make it more accessible than the Blink(1). If we hit $100k we will even be adding RGB shield kits for $1 each for DIY blinks. Erik Kettenburg - Digispark creator

5 points by cleverjake 14y ago

I caught a lot of flack for complaining that the blink device (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thingm/blink1-the-usb-rgb-led http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thingm/blink1-the-usb-rg...) was too expensive, and this just proves it. $21 for two of these things? They're a lot more sophisticated than a USB-connected LED, right? Sold.

zokier 14y ago
Depending how much you value miniaturization, these things aren't still super-cheap. TI sold MSP430 launchpad boards for $4.30 (probably at a loss though). ST sells STM32F4 discovery board for $15, which is way more powerful. edit: Just checked, ST has also cheaper discovery boards, eg STM32F0 at $8.

jgrahamc 14y ago

This is very nice. I've used Arduino Pro in a few projects (some listed here: http://jgc.org/labs.html http://jgc.org/labs.html) and this would have made a good alternative. It has a nice combination of features: USB (no need for external FTDI cable), ability to use external power and has own regular (so can battery power it), and 6 I/O ports.

microtherion 14y ago
For the price, it certainly looks like a good deal. However, the ATtiny85 only has 8K flash, so using 2K of that for a boot loader is a fairly significant limitation. I'm also curious about the "6 I/O ports" (and have asked the developers a question about it). I'm far from an expert on the matter, but I was under the impression that you could only reuse the RESET pin if you were willing to give up the ability to reprogram the chip in-system.
- freehunter 14y ago
  I didn't see it on first glance at the Kickstarter page, but I know Arduino has more than 6 pins and more than 3 PWM pins. I have to wonder how compatible this will be with projects that can work on Arduino but might not be able to fit on Digispark. *edit - obviously it won't be, I'm just wondering out loud what kind of projects a user of this board would be unknowingly locking themselves out of when they assume "Arduino-capable" means they can fit that cool RFID project onto an $8 board.
  - microtherion 14y ago
    I'd think that the Arduino community is pretty good at estimating their pin & memory needs, and the Arduino IDE handles the ATtiny85 just fine (Something that is, I believe, not true for something like the ATtiny10). The biggest compatibility issue may be timers (each model has a different # of timers with different capabilities).
    - freehunter 14y ago
      I guess my main concern is the amount of projects I see online where I think "man that's cool, I'm going to try to build that". These projects will tell you what pins you need if you read through them, but the various other incompatibilities (memory and timers being ones already called out) might not be fully realized until you've gotten some way into the build. The beauty of Arduino is that you don't need an EE degree to make a project. Of course, these complaints can be leveraged to any fork of a project, I'm just throwing them out there. For what it's worth, I pledged $28 to get three of these, and am currently wondering if I maybe should have pledged for five. On the other hand, I'm mentally comparing the projects I have in my scrapbook that may or may not translate to this new board.

digistump 14y ago

Thanks everyone for the great feedback and for the support! Our pricing is as low as we can get it (US assembly of SMT boards can be expensive!), and we did that because we wanted to make it more accessible than the Blink(1). If we hit $100k we will even be adding RGB shield kits for $1 each for DIY blinks. Erik Kettenburg - Digispark creator