Following up on tonight's talk, Micro Controller Usb Devices

[Stewart C. Russell]

On 24-03-13 06:15 , Peter wrote:
>
> The Arduino 'ecosystem' is based on vastly overpriced hardware modules

They're not overpriced if you haven't already invested in $000s of
electronics kit. F'rinstance, that breadboard Arduino you linked to: the
serial interface and the USB MCU programmer alone comes to more than the
cost of an official Arduino bought at high-street prices.

> ... do not expect to become proficient before you
> put down 10 or more working projects ...

Everyone has to start somewhere. While it might pain you — an
experienced hardware developer — to see a flashy project that might only
be using 1% of its MCU's capabilities become popular, the barriers to
physical computing have been drastically lowered. If you have a project
that needs to sample a few sensors in the 1 Hz – 10 kHz range, drive a
few simple outputs, and be easily controlled from the USB port, why not
use an Arduino?

For the few people who take this from a hobby to a career, it's
important for them to learn the specifics of the trade. Prototyping
isn't even on the same planet as Quantity 1,000,000 production. But you
have to admit, there are a lot more interested learners out there. Every
second spent complaining about newbies would be better spent designing
something simple that you could sell to them at a tidy markup ... ;-)

> Also beware of many MANY non working projects

Yes, that can be true, sadly. A couple of Arduino projects I've been
interested in have been wildly off where their creators said they were.
One power meter project that generated a bit of a buzz online a couple
of years back couldn't work, and when I queried the author I got a
"yeah, that never quite worked, do you know how to fix it?" response.
Another, the pleasantly futile Arduino hardware random number generator
misses ways of correcting for component ageing, has no stop conditions
if the noise circuit fails, and can't tell if external noise is being
applied to attempt to throw the process.

But for each one that failed, there are more examples that are well
thought out, clearly documented, and work nicely. K3NG's radio projects,
and Limor Fried's GPS-based toys are two that spring immediately to mind.

> Wikipedia knows a lot about these things so people who are interested should
> peruse that first.

But then, it is written by self elected 'experts' too. I've given up
trying to correct factual errors about wind power technology on
Wikipedia. It's no longer fun to see one's industry standard citations
overwritten by someone parroting a news release they read on TreeHugger.com.

cheers,
 Stewart
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