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Adafruit's Trinket
- the-kenny 13y agoWhile I like the Arduino movement very much, I don't see what's so special about this. It's a breakout board for an ATTiny, with some vreg and an usb port on board. So what?
- kwantam 13y agoOne obvious advantage is that it's cheap enough to use as-is. One of the things that keeps me from caring much about Arduino is that it's too expensive to use for anything but experimentation: if I'm building more than a one-off, I'll always do a custom PCB. For reasonable volumes that's still probably the best approach, but at $8 a pop this is perfect for throwing together some quick project. By way of analogy: to me, an Arduino is a breadboard. If I use one at all, it's to play with a first concept, and certainly not for any kind of permanent use. If that's true, then this is kind of like solderable perfboard: not optimal, but good enough for many things.
- nemesisrobot 13y agoIt's attractive because of the convenience it provides.
- v13inc 13y ago$8 for an Arduino compatible microcontroller with a battle-tested PCB, all pre-assembled is an amazing deal. Sure, you could breadboard your own for cheaper, but you wouldn't be saving a whole lot in the scheme of things.
- HeyLaughingBoy 13y agoIt's a relatively huge amount of power in a tiny package, ready to roll. Many digital logic tasks that used to take a number of TTL/CMOS logic chips, or other devices can now be done in one inexpensive package. A simple example: every week it seems, on the electronics forums, someone will ask how to do a simple, or a complex timing task and they will be pointed at various logic, or 555 timer chip designs. Using something like this not only makes those projects simple, it provides a common frame of reference. If I can say to someone "go buy a Trinket from Adafruit and load this code into it and it will work cause I already tested it on my workbench" that provides a tremendous value because both I and the person I'm talking to online are working from a common platform.
- IgorPartola 13y agoOr for $10, you could get the TI MSP430 LaunchPad [1]. You can then pop off the DIP chip and mount it however you want. It is nice since the chips themselves are about $1 or so each (depending on which one you get). [1] http://www.ti.com/ww/en/launchpad/msp430_head.html http://www.ti.com/ww/en/launchpad/msp430_head.html
- nemesisrobot 13y agoLooks like it's a software implementation [1]. [1] https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit-Trinket-Gemma-Bootloader https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit-Trinket-Gemma-Bootloade...
- phunge 13y agoMy experience with the launchpad has been mixed. The chips are definitely aimed at the low power, low requirements side of things; I had a project where the MSP430g2231's inability to clock from an external high-frequency crystal was a dealbreaker. There's also a wider breadth of hobbyist software targeting the AVR. If you're a hobbyist, it's definitely not worth saving a few bucks if you're only making a few of them and you account for the value of your time. YMMV.
- IgorPartola 13y agoI was under the impression that the newer chips are able to clock from an external crystal. My 2553 certainly came with one, though I have had no need to use it yet.
- Kliment 13y agoThat's the crystal for the slow clock, which runs at about 32kHz. You still can't clock the main clock off it.
- codehero 13y agoThe g2231 etc certainly are not specced to work from high frequency crystals or oscillators, but in actual use it works: http://forum.43oh.com/topic/594-use-a-12mhz-external-square-wave-as-mclk/ http://forum.43oh.com/topic/594-use-a-12mhz-external-square-...
- phunge 13y agoLooks somewhat inspired by the teensy 2.0 (mini USB -- not micro!, bootloader button). This has a lower price point and an ATTiny instead of atmega32u4. I have a few teensys and find them to be really practical. Does the ATTiny implement USB or is it bit-banged?
- eksith 13y agoI think it does. BTW, Teensy 3.0 just recently came out : http://www.pjrc.com/store/teensy3.html http://www.pjrc.com/store/teensy3.html It's only slightly bigger than the 2.0, but you get 3 more PWM pins (10 total) and 34 I/O and 3.3V out.
- ricardobeat 13y agoPlus a 32-bit ARM processor @ 48mhz, and 128k flash.
- snom380 13y agoIt looks even more inspired by the DigiSpark: http://digistump.com/products/1 http://digistump.com/products/1
- adaml_623 13y agoGood question. The type USB implementation is important. There are lots of things you can't do well if the CPU is managing the USB connection in firmware at the same time as running the implementation.
- slowdown 13y agoMany people don't find this exciting. But I am excited indeed. You know why? Because to program an Atmel Microcontroller, you need a 'programmer' whose selection itself is fairly confusing for newbies (USB/Serial/etc) and costs as much as $20 for a good one. This one instead is just plug and play, and that's awesome :)
- duskwuff 13y agoThe Arduino platform has already largely solved that, though. Almost all of their products (besides a few "Pro" models which are TTL-serial only) have USB ports on board.
- chad_oliver 13y agoYes, but (at least in New Zealand) they're more than the $20 threshold mentioned above. So you're effectively buying a microcontroller plus a programmer.
- kken 13y agoIt's very similar to the digispark and is riding on the tails of it. The only major difference is in the pinout. www.digistump.com
- trebor 13y agoI own two digisparks, and I think the main improvements are the 3.3V/5V and mounting holes. I'm still glad to see more devices filling this niche.
- kken 13y agoI designed a very similar board. It's currently on order from OSH park. I'll see how it turns out. http://oshpark.com/shared_projects/ltCSLIIB http://oshpark.com/shared_projects/ltCSLIIB
- snoonan 13y agoLimor (and the company she built) has been producing microcontroller and Arduino kits & boards like this for a long time. Digispark reflects a lot of her original work. This is a good thing!
- blhack 13y agoI love this! The attiny85 has been my go-to chip for the last couple of years. They're great. They're really cheap, which makes them really easy to just put into things. It's also a great way of getting people to think-outside-the-arduino.
- outside1234 13y agoThis is probably an ignorant/newbie question but what are the connectivity options available with a board like this? Can it do Zigbee or WiFi?
- pjscott 13y agoThis board is pretty minimalistic. It has five general-purpose I/O pins that you can use to read and write logic-level signals (either 0V or your supply voltage, usually either 3.3V or 5V). Three of those also have analog-to-digital converters, so you can use them to measure voltages in that whole range. Two of these pins have hardware for generating PWM signals, making them useful for motor control. Three of these can be used for an SPI or I2C bus.
- snom380 13y agoBy itself at can't do those. If you connect it to a WiFi or Zigbee module using SPI it can, but for WiFi you'll probably want to buy a more powerful microcontroller board anyway.
- tynan 13y agoFor someone who knows nothing much about Arduinos, what are a few examples of projects this would be good for?
- ChuckMcM 13y agoWell the interesting things probably involve using the SPI port to talk to some memory expansion. At Google, Henner Zeller built a circuit pretty much like this that drove an RGB LED and was used for Test status 'orbs'. Basically with a bit of code your orb would turn red if your tests started failing in the continuous build. I used one to add a foot 'key' to my setup when playing World of Warcraft (it was my push to talk switch) but it could have been anything, it pretended to be a USB keyboard with one key :-). I've seen them used to pretend to be a mouse and move the mouse around (a 'jiggler') so that a machine wouldn't kick in the screen saver. All various sorts of things you might want to do with a bit of compute.
- Cyranix 13y agoHead over to http://hackaday.com http://hackaday.com or http://makezine.com http://makezine.com and search for Arduino or ATMega or microcontroller -- you should have a ton of hits describing various projects.
- notgoodrobot 13y agoHow similar is this to an Arduino?
- 13y ago
- danboarder 13y agoAnother option is the even smaller "open source hardware" Digispark with USB on board, arduino enabled, supporting many shields (grove shields etc): http://www.crowdsupply.com/digistump/digispark-mini-usb-arduino http://www.crowdsupply.com/digistump/digispark-mini-usb-ardu...
- zxcvgm 13y agoThe ATtiny series do not have USB capability, which is why they are cheaper. The underlying bitbang implementation comes from V-USB [1], which is commonly used to add USB capability in software. Another implementation which may be of interest is LUFA [2]. [1] http://www.obdev.at/products/vusb/index.html http://www.obdev.at/products/vusb/index.html [2] http://www.fourwalledcubicle.com/LUFA.php http://www.fourwalledcubicle.com/LUFA.php
- jwatte 13y agoWhy didn't they use the ATmega 8u2 with native USB? The small version is no bigger than the chip on this trinket. Eating 3 kB for the tinyUSB stack is annoying. Also, they claim is has "hardware I2C" which is stretching the truth IMO. The USI doesn't let you write a fully interrupt driven I2C slave, it is a polled implementation leaving lots of support logic to software.
- egfx 13y agoCan I use this to plug into my cars usb and take over the touch screen display unit?
- danellis 13y agoI got excited about this thinking I could use it to quickly prototype controlling a toaster oven over USB, but I'd have to add another software USB implementation like the bootloader's.
- BuildTheRobots 13y agoNo one seems to have mentioned the Minimus[1] as an arduino compatible[2] alternative -they we're costing us £3 and have a lot more GPIO pins to play with[3]. The new version is powered by a ATMEGA 32U2 so it's got some grunt (and lets you play USB too). [1] http://minimususb.com/ http://minimususb.com/ [2] https://github.com/pbrook/minimus-arduino/ https://github.com/pbrook/minimus-arduino/ [3] https://github.com/pbrook/minimus-arduino/wiki#pinouts https://github.com/pbrook/minimus-arduino/wiki#pinouts