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SQL/PSM isn't SQL. It's a second, optional language added to the SQL standards and competes with the likes of TSQL, PL/SQL, and PL/pgSQL. It's an optional extension with different syntax. If you're arguing (by just mentioning it) that SQL/PSM and SQL are the same thing, then we may as well say C#, C++, Objective-C, Cilk, and C-with-classes are all C. Lump Delphi and Ada into the Pascal bucket. Call SML and OCaml both just ML.

Yes, Arduino has a special preprocessor for C++. Many projects have their own preprocessors, template kits, custom configurators, or custom build systems. That doesn't mean the language isn't still C++. Visual C++ is still C++. Delphi is still Object Pascal, and C++ with Boost or the STL or some custom preprocessing that is still written as C++ is C++. The Arduino FAQ lets you know that the recommended language is just C or C++ with some custom functions and some preprocessing. It also goes on to say you can program it in any language that supports the processor so long as you link against the proper libraries. https://www.arduino.cc/en/Main...

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Print your board old-style at home. some Z80? Really easy to do with a laser printer and ferric chloride. http://www.z80.info/z80_mp.htm Breadboard project: http://www.vaxman.de/projects/... Also check Arduino Severino: https://www.arduino.cc/en/uplo...

For a more PC based learning tool, we use to use Apple Logo. The Turtle Logo lives on as a free web site: https://turtleacademy.com/play...

For more advanced youth, an Ardruino kit may work well. https://www.arduino.cc/

Scratch for Arduino

While the PI (any kind) does not have enough GPIO to bit-bang it yourself, how about an Arduino Mega board? It has 54 GPIO pins...but no idea if it could handle SCSI speeds, even the oldest and slowest. As an emergency way to read out some old files it's probably worth pursuing.

How about Arduino and WeMos / ESP8266? They don't have a gig of virtual memory.

There's even services out there already built for them, with mobile apps even, e.g. Blynk and Cayenne

You act like all Arduinos only use the 8-bit Atmel-parts. Take a look at, say, https://www.arduino.cc/en/Main... -- go on, you can do it, take a look. Arduino 101: x86! Arduino Zero: 32-bit ARM Atmel SAMD21! Arduino MKR1000: 32-bit ARM Atmel SAMD21! The now-retired Arduino Due: 32-bit ARM Atmel SAM3x8E! The Arduino.org - selection of products has an even wider selection of MCUs in use.

The thing here is: the OP requested faster stuff, but Atmel doesn't seem to be producing faster 8-bit parts; if you want faster and insist on sticking to Atmel it's going to be 3.3V and 32-bit, and if you want 5V then you have to stick with what you already got.

The conclusion is rather simple: when talking about Aduino, the first thing from Banzi's, or anyone else involved in development of the project, should be "hey, it all started with the thesis of this Colombian guy, Hernando Barragan". That's all it'd take to be fair to Hernando.

I'm sorry. You apparently missed the part where Hernando Barragan quotes from the Arduino credits page:

Arduino was initially developed at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea, in northern Italy. It derives from Wiring, a platform built by Hernando Barragan as his master's thesis at Interaction-Ivrea. Hernando was advised by Massimo and Casey Reas. Wiring and, in turn, Arduino build on previous work by both Massimo and Casey -- Massimo's Programma2003 electronics prototyping platform and the Processing platform by Casey and Ben Fry. Early versions of both Wiring and Arduino also relied upon Pascal Stang's avrlib libraries.

That meets your criterion for what it takes to be fair to him, does it not?

You can't "steal" an unpatented idea concerning a micro-environment running open-sourced code.

From your linked article:

2005, Massimo Banzi, along with David Mellis (an IDII student at the time) and David Cuartielles, added support for the cheaper ATmega8 microcontroller to Wiring. Then they forked (or copied) the Wiring source code and started running it as a separate project, called Arduino.

There was no need to create a separate project, as I would have gladly helped them and developed support for the ATmega8 and any other microcontrollers. I had planned to do this all along.

So now you need permission to fork open-sourced code? Based on "need"?

Next from the article:

Why Hasn't Arduino Acknowledged Wiring Better?
I don't know.

The reference to Wiring on the Arduino.cc website, although it has improved slightly over time, is misleading as it tries to attribute Wiring to Programma2003.

Arduino was initially developed at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea, in northern Italy. It derives from Wiring, a platform built by Hernando Barragan as his master's thesis at Interaction-Ivrea. Hernando was advised by Massimo and Casey Reas. Wiring and, in turn, Arduino build on previous work by both Massimo and Casey -- Massimo's Programma2003 electronics prototyping platform and the Processing platform by Casey and Ben Fry. Early versions of both Wiring and Arduino also relied upon Pascal Stang's avrlib libraries.

So they do credit his student, but his student believes that they should do it better. Hypocritically, the student is up in arms against any reference to Programma2003 despite acknowledging in his own piece that he wrote "a small and simple environment for Mac OS X so students with a Mac could use it as well" and that Programma2003 boards preceded his own.

just read the student's post about how HE came up with the concepts and had it stolen from him.

Which concept again? The open source tool chain or the power LED?

From your linked article:

In my thesis document, I characterized Programma2003 as a non-viable model to follow, since other more comprehensive tools were already available in the market. The main problems were:

*the language is far from useful in any other context (e.g. you canâ(TM)t program your computer using JAL)
*itâ(TM)s arcane syntax and the hardware design made it highly unlikely to go somewhere in the future for teaching and learning
*the board didnâ(TM)t have a power LED (a design flaw)
It was impossible to know if it was powered or not

The student comes across as whiny, seeking not merely credit but fame, and then you take it to a whole different level by treating the situation as if everything sprung from the mind of the student and was stolen. Because, apparently, Programma2003 had nothing to do with anything.

The reference to the article is informative, but your conclusions are anything but.

The Arduino platform consists of open-source hardware, open-source software, and microcontroller-based kits, making it easy to (re)program the processors, and develop software for hardware applications using a java-clone and an easy-to-learn IDE

In fact, if they had honestly meant to be talking about what language the IDE had been written in, then they would not have called it a java "clone" at all, since "The Arduino IDE is written in Java...".

So while I'm inclined to think that some people might actually genuinely believe what you sarcastically suggested. the fact remains that it is wholly disinformation, and it should not be perpetuated.

Okay, now put his face on the Turing Award website

because we didn't have to worry (too much) about the target platform. "Hello world" was pretty much the same on a PDP-11, DOS PC or whatever. Now, people are giving examples of Javascript in a browser (so you need to know what <script> and </script> are for), Facebook, etc. What about on an Arduino?

You think this is tough for a kid? Wait until you get into the real world and have to listen to some supposed CS grad whine that they can't figure out Xlib. Or how to write an init shell script?

Actually, with all the rave around Arduinos, Raspberrys & Co. quite a few people are "learning forwards" again.
Here's a serial TCP/IP 'stack' for example: http://playground.arduino.cc/C...

It is presumably an attempt at a joke based on the fact that Forth makes use of RPN.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

I for one find Forth to be a fascinating language. The fact that it has been around for a while does not diminish it in any way.

I first heard of it back in the 80's while learning assembler on the 6502. I noticed it again while getting to know FreeBSD (loader stage 3) and decided to finally learn it when I came across some old manuals and software for my newly acquired PET CBM 8032 just a few weeks ago.

Ever since, I seem to notice it mentioned more and more, perhaps partly because of renewed interest in stack machines, but also because it offers an interactive way to boot strap a very small system with minimal resources.

It is available in some form on almost every platform that I know.

Following are some resources that I have found to be of interest. Hopefully those sites will not get badly hurt.

http://www.forth.com/starting-...
http://thinking-forth.sourcefo...
http://playground.arduino.cc/C....
https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/ma...
https://uwaterloo.ca/independe...
http://www.ultratechnology.com...

...

You were teaching a class who's entire point was to learn how to do such a thing. Theres a world of difference between that and someone with literally no background in circuits at all, or complete self taught.

The solutions you listed above would be zero help to someone with no background in embedded processors.

Oh horse crap. If someone is capable of hooking up a basic led and resistor, and capable of churning out C++ and setting up the Arduino IDE then it is absolutely trivial for them to hook up 6 wires to a breadboard and run a command on their computer to flash a microcontroller. Just how dumb do you think the average tinkerer is? I've seen accountants do this with nothing more than a fleeting interest in electronics.

What programmer? what 6 pins? where is it documented? google search for ISP programmer get me lots of link to website developer jobs, but not much in the embedded world. Remember, these people dont know jack about embedded systems. Its simple for you, not them.

Ok given your search results I retract my statement. Some people are intellectually challenged.
For the record the first 4 results on "ISP Programmer"
1. Wikipedia entry on ISP with not 1, not 2, but 3 pictures showing the pinout for AVR microcontrollers. Yes 3 pictures on the first entry on the first search. It's amazing that you couldn't figure this out.
2. This is even better. The second entry is a link to a tutorial on Arduino.cc on how to use and Arduino to program AVRs. We're actually talking about the application that you said is too hard for people to do, which I said requires a minimal amount of hardware, and the tutorial shows you how to do it with no hardware, complete with pictures on how the wiring is done (not even a schematic a breadboard picture), a tutorial which does the very thing we're talking about from the very site people are most likely to use if they play with arduinos. You just can't make this shit up.
3. A link to adafruit's blog with a list of cheap ISP programmers and how to use them.
4. A link to Atmel's Application note on AVRs.

Where would you buy them? mouser? digikey? what are they called. Again there isn't even enough there to google search for. An amateur might even know what a bootloader is, but how does one get them "preinstalled"?

Have you tried http://www.arduino.cc/ and then clicking on buy? 4euro + VAT for the exact chip in the Arduino UNO preloaded with the bootloader right from the source.

So now you expect them to layout a USB circuit on a PCB? I thought you said this was a simple task?

Sure. We're discussing an article that is discussing laying out a PCB. If they can layout a circuit board then they can get USB working. The tight specs and tolerances on USB matter a bit on high speed USB2.0 applications but the vast majority of people are going to do something trivially basic like load the LUFA libraries out of the box and click go, or load V-USB. Incidentally a how-to with pictures on how to get V-USB working is the first hit on Google for "AVR USB".

So once again, they are buying an arduino for every product they sell, my way was easier from a manufacturability standpoint.

Nope just the microcontroller, right from the Arduino website with everything preloaded.

If you look at the Buy Arduino Boards section of the Arduino site, all the boards are out of stock except for a couple of LilyPads. Also, the UNO Rev3 on that site lists for 20 euros. If you go to AliExpress you can find a clone for $6 with free shipping, including a USB cable, and if you want you can also get a clone for $3 (with free shipping) if you're willing to trade the FTDI USB-serial chip for a CH340G chip. From comments online the latter works fine, it just requires a different driver, and a lot of people are figuring we shouldn't be supporting FTDI either after what they did when they made their drivers bricks clones of their own chips. That's just one board. In my experience, the difference between prices of Arduino Mega boards and the clones are even worse.

I get that we want to support the official organization and I own 2 or 3 official boards. However, the price difference is sometimes too much to ignore. I spend a good deal of my time writing Arduino-compatible software and releasing it for free under an open source license on the internet. Lots of people have downloaded it and use it, and I am happy to answer their questions and help them with their projects for free. I don't expect to get paid a dime for that. A lot of people are doing similar stuff and we're all contributing to one big Arduino ecosystem in our own way. The fact that there are clones is a *good* thing. It's only the fact that clone-makers are using the Arduino trademark that's wrong. Also, if they say Arduino-compatible, then I think that's OK. Some of you might be too young to remember the birth of the PC, but IBM made the PC and then the clone-makers came along and made a whole bunch of cheaper and better *IBM-compatible* PCs. Look where that lead us.

Just because there are idiots that do no research at Wired, does not mean it is news.

Or that they know what they are talking about.....

You want to copy a Pi? Knock yourself out. http://www.arduino.cc/ even provides you with their hardware designs directly if you want to take their stuff, modify it and even sell it to somebody else.

Then there are the multiple Software Defined Radio projects that have "Open Source" hardware out there. Check out GNU Radio, it connects to a number of "free" hardware designs.

Presumably the answer is: you wash it, and it still works.

No idea if this prototype has that property, but it very well might. (I didn't RTFA.) You can wash LilyPads, can't you?

Just to be clear, and responding to the NMEA comment, when it comes to mapping and field prescriptions, all the major systems will accept GPS from just about any receiver via a serial connection (NMEA or some other). It's the guidance part of the computer that is locked to vendor-specific receivers. There's no reason at all for this vendor lock except to guarantee you will be paying a subscription for correction signals from the vendor. In my mind this area is ripe for disruption. The sooner we can get cheap RTK GPS positioning the better. And even if it means replacing the hydraulic steering valve, if there's an open. hackable GPS guidance system out there, I and many farmers will move to it.

One guy using a laptop and arduino made his own GPS guidance system. Very cool stuff:
http://forum.arduino.cc/index....

So it's still possible to do incredibly cool hacks.

That said, the proprietary solutions do work very well and are well-integrated

The low-end Arduino models are the equivalent of what we used to have. The ATtiny and ATmega microcontrollers aren't that much different from the old 8-bit CPUs and the Arduino IDE will teach them to program in C, so your kids can still have great times. It's one thing to code something that happens on a screen, it's something else to be able to make things move, blink and interact with the real world.

The best thing is, Arduino's are so cheap that you can buy one or more for each of your kid and they only need the Arduino IDE (Windows, OS X and Linux) and a USB cable. And for the "Blink" example, it uses the on-board LED so you don't even need to wire up anything to get your first "wow" moment. And Arduino shields makes it extremely easy to add features to the Arduino.

For beginners, I'd recommend going with the Arduino Uno since the ATmega328P is socketed and you can replace it if your kids ever make a mistake and blow it up. It's cheaper and better for the environment than replacing the whole Arduino. If you ever need to buy another ATmega328P, either make sure you can write the bootloader to it or buy one with the bootloader already programmed.

Have fun!

The low-end Arduino models are the equivalent of what we used to have. The ATtiny and ATmega microcontrollers aren't that much different from the old 8-bit CPUs and the Arduino IDE will teach them to program in C, so your kids can still have great times. It's one thing to code something that happens on a screen, it's something else to be able to make things move, blink and interact with the real world.

The best thing is, Arduino's are so cheap that you can buy one or more for each of your kid and they only need the Arduino IDE (Windows, OS X and Linux) and a USB cable. And for the "Blink" example, it uses the on-board LED so you don't even need to wire up anything to get your first "wow" moment. And Arduino shields makes it extremely easy to add features to the Arduino.

For beginners, I'd recommend going with the Arduino Uno since the ATmega328P is socketed and you can replace it if your kids ever make a mistake and blow it up. It's cheaper and better for the environment than replacing the whole Arduino. If you ever need to buy another ATmega328P, either make sure you can write the bootloader to it or buy one with the bootloader already programmed.

Have fun!

Amusing and all that, but honestly, arduino led blinker projects aren't really all that much. It's basically hello world and the IDE comes with an example that clearly explains everything:

http://arduino.cc/en/tutorial/...

It really is basically plug and play -- plug in some LEDs to a pin and to ground and then light 'em up. Of course, if you want to do more complicated lighting up, the power is there if you want to use it.

Most modern cars will provide interesting diagnostic data via the ODB2 interface. Something like this would be a good first project: http://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=95037.0

Poor form, but here are some examples.

Intentional and willful destruction of another person's property for the base reason that he didn't buy with you but with your competitor? I don't know about your country, but over here in socialist Europe we have consumer protection laws that deserve that name.

I would say that modifying the PID on the chip is pretty far from "intentional and willful destruction." From one of the comments in the support board posting masquerading as TFA:

The driver reprograms the product ID so it won't work.

Price of buying fake chips.

If that is the case you can easily bind the new VID/PID to the correct driver in Linux and it should still work:

Code: [Select]

A vid/pid pair can be added dynamically using sysfs, for example:

echo 0403 1234 >/sys/bus/usb-serial/drivers/ftdi_sio/new_id


Again, if that is the only "damage" done, lsusb should help you find the device, or just monitoring dmesg as you attach it.

And

The new Windows driver reprograms the PID to 0.

More info here:

http://forum.arduino.cc/index....

While it is rather underhanded, had FTDI done this the *correct* way and just interrogated the chip and refused to work with a fake, this would be a non-story. At the same time, just modifying the PID is far from "destroying" the device. If FTDI's driver did something that actually did damage to the hardware, I might be more sympathetic. That's not to say that I think FTDI did the right thing, just that the did not actually damage or "brick" anything. The device isn't broken, it just needs to have its PID reset. Once that happens (and I guess that's what FTDI was trying to do), the end user will be painfully aware that they have a counterfeit chip.

As I said, poorly executed and likely to cause some backlash, but no hardware is damaged or destroyed. Unless you're an idiot.

Pretty sure the Arduino market is what pulled Intel in. http://arduino.cc/en/ArduinoCe...
And you know... You may be right. There was no embedded SBC market before the Pi came out.

The Pi competed on one front, and one front only. Price. And no one really competed with it. The boards of similar (but still higher) price that destroyed the Pi in functionality were around before the Pi was.

Please explain how the Propeller blows away a Cortex M3 with 96k RAM running at 84MHz with a bunch of hardware peripherals
http://arduino.cc/en/Main/Ardu...

You are 100% right in criticizing me. Actually, I wasn't expecting this to get to the frontpage.Nonetheless, I thought Slashdot was the best place to ask. Many times I've seen pieces of news about Amigas and usually they're warmly received (are they not outdated?). I'm wondering why so many people are saying stuff like "let it go", "it's useless", "learn a language." Other people are linking me to LMGTFY as if I haven't spent hours looking for working links.

Don't get me wrong, maybe they're right and I shouldn't spend/waste my time learning about a dead platform, but at least I'd like to hear their rationale.

Because Amiga, C64, Early DOS and UNIX's were great and successful. For me, all that stuff was my childhood and messing around with it is like going to a garage sale and finding my old favorite GI Joe figure or something. PalmOS5 failed right out of the gate. There's nothing to be nostalgic about.

If you want to do some cool hobby stuff (and I don't blame you, I do that sort of thing all the time) I recommend the following:
RaspberryPI or one of the several 3rd party variants out there: It's basically a small PC with a UART (hardware interface with buttons) You can turn it into a media player, an Audio DSP, a "car computer" whatever you can think of.
http://www.raspberrypi.org/
http://www.pcworld.com/article...

Arduino is a micro controller. Not to be confused with the RPI. An arduino will teach you how to solder :-)
You can run scripts written in C, and control lights, relays, sensors, etc... You can build something that automatically waters your garden, turns on your lights, feeds your pets... basically anything you can script.
http://www.arduino.cc/

AX84 is a website that has a host of amplifier projects. They are all tube based. Why tube? Well a lot of us think it sounds better, but that's a long argument. Even if they don't, it's how electronics started and if you want to know how things were done originally... and why that lead to how things are done now, Tubes are a great way to start. It's like learning to build a campfire by rubbing 2 sticks together. Yea, you could just throw a road flare on a dead tree, but somethings are just worth doing the old way. If you're not a musician, there's a Stereo amp near the bottom.
http://www.ax84.com/sel.html

Then there's steam engines... There's no collective site for that, but I've done them and they are fun. No codding involved unless you count the valves ;-)
These are super fun though. Imagine a device that can generate power from any source of heat. Even mirrors reflecting the sun. I recommend starting on youtube.

Anyways, there are lots of "useless" projects you can do that will have a far larger community and be far less of a waste of time in the end. Good luck.

I used this Oscilloscope based on an Arduino and ATMega328 running with a 16MHz crystal. It's more of a toy/demo scope, not even great for audio frequencies and for lower scales you probably want to add an instrumentation amp front end. The thing I like about it is that it reuses/upcycles all of those pocket NTSC (or PAL) analog TVs obsoleted by the FCC a couple of years ago.

What is cheap to you? I would have thought the Imp ($25, incs WiFi) and Beetle ($7-8, no Wifi) would output 100mA per GPIO pin.

You would have thought wrong: the imp module maxes out at 20 mA on its LED pins. I couldn't find an output current spec for the Beetle, but it claims to be a mini Arduino Leonardo, so I wouldn't expect more than the Leonardo's 40 mA per pin.

"What is cheap" is a good question--for those who can live with two chips (the horror!), a $6 TLC5940 will get you 16 channels that drive 120 mA each (just the first chip I found).

The latest "Arduino" is $90 http://blog.wickeddevice.com/?p=494 and still running a 8-bit CPU.

The latest Arduino board, the Due can be found here: http://arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoardDue

And its ARM based, a 32 bit CPU.

There is also the older Yun: http://arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoardYun

Which has a Atheros AR9331 daughter board as well as an 8bit CPU. It runs Linux out of the box.

The board you linked to is a clone, not an actual arduino, and there are hundreds of different clones that run all sorts of CPUs right down the the Intel Galileo which is an Atom board (x86)

The latest "Arduino" is $90 http://blog.wickeddevice.com/?p=494 and still running a 8-bit CPU.

The latest Arduino board, the Due can be found here: http://arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoardDue

And its ARM based, a 32 bit CPU.

There is also the older Yun: http://arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoardYun

Which has a Atheros AR9331 daughter board as well as an 8bit CPU. It runs Linux out of the box.

The board you linked to is a clone, not an actual arduino, and there are hundreds of different clones that run all sorts of CPUs right down the the Intel Galileo which is an Atom board (x86)

8 bits and popular, designed to get people started.
http://www.arduino.cc/

Apart from memory connected to the video controller, the Nintendo Entertainment System has 2048 bytes of RAM. (Many games, especially later ones, have an extra 8192 bytes on the Game Pak PCB to store large destructible maps.) The ATmega328 in the Arduino Uno also has 2048 bytes of RAM. The ATmega2560 has 8192 bytes, like a Sega Master System. (Source) Tricks to use memory more efficiently include byte-sized variables and even bitfield variables.

That Arudino kit *is* over the top. You're looking more for the original style Arduino Uno: http://arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoardUno

While I like the idea of having an Arduino compatible board running Linux to do some more advanced projects, I don't understand what drove Intel to force this board to be Arduino compatible. The Quark processor is not designed for this sort of stuff as it has neither a sufficient number of GPIO pins nor any ADCs. It sure has a lot of interfaces (SPI, I2C, PCI-E, SD-Card, Serial etc.), but it lacks the things that are useful for a hacker project.

So they had to include a separate GPIO extender chip (over a slow I2C interconnect) as well as an separate ADC. The Quark SoC has some 15 GPIO Pins, the extender another 40. But of those 55 Pins only 20 GPIO pins are actually available on the Arduino shield pins -- the rest is used for all the Muxes to switch pins between the ADC, the GPIO Extender and the Quark SoC to emulate the flexibility of the Arduino AVR processor.

While I haven't looked at the actual PCB schematic, I think the board layout is also strange. The ADC is on the opposite side from the analog input pins, meaning that all analog signals have to travel a long distance in the vicinity of some high speed digital signals. And the GPIO Extender Chip is on the opposite corner from all the digital output pins.

This, together with the BGA devices (SoC, RAM), seem to indicate that this is at least an 6 layer board which will make it hard to clone this design -- something that IMHO has contributed to the success of the Arduino. The Schematic for this board has 27 pages compared to the single page of the Arduino Uno

It seems that this Board is designed more as a competitor to the Raspberry Pi than to the Arduino, both in price and in features.The Arduino compatibility is just some marketing thing which makes the board overly complex and more expensive than it needs to be.

But hey, it sure must be fun to employ a few million transistors and a full blown operating system to run the Arduino Blink demo :-)

Sorry for Intel, but the just announced Arduino Tre is far better from any point of views.
http://blog.arduino.cc/2013/10/03/a-sneak-preview-of-arduino-tre/?utm_source=Arduino+World&utm_campaign=9f14cc4ca3-MakerFaire_World_201310_2_2013&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_69a7d1abe4-9f14cc4ca3-76843037

* Run faster than the Intel solution: An Atom core yield the same code execution speed as an Cortex-A8 core at the same frequency, so 1GHz A8 will easily catch on a 0.4GHz ia32).
* Cheaper and simpler to design on a custom board: just look at the chip package and at the PCB routing...
* Simpler power supply design, again just look at the schematics and at the PCB.
* HDMI output.
* More I/O, and all are integrated directly into the two CPUs, not using peripheral chips with low bandwidth.
* Already supported by larges communities, for the two processors.

Intel is just trying to enter a new market with a big buzz, but there actual solution still far away from the concurrent solutions. There just don't understand that in the embedded market nobody is bounded to the ia32 instructions set. Integration is the key and there Quark X1000 don't bring anything new on the table.

Given that they haven't sent assassins after the BeagleBoard team(indeed, the other big announcement from Arduino-land is that they collaborated with that group to produce a 'basically a beaglebone black with an arduino-compatible set of headers and and onboard AVR, the Tre, is Intel's attempt to throw their hat into the ring really so sinister?

The recently released Arduino Yún runs a modified version of OpenWRT dubbed Linino.

You use the Motor Shield.

Arduino is a good start. The Arduino robot kit is a a better one.

http://arduino.cc/en/Main/Robot

Arduino boards as many have suggested is a good start for hardware. http://arduino.cc/en/Main/Software below is a good rule of thumb you can do almost anything autonomously on the arduino board itself as long as you dont require it to number crunch. Ex: Simple instructions like bump sensor registers send 90deg turn to some wheel servo you can keep it local to the bot If your bot requires visual cognition (locate a ball on a plane) and associated number crunching, offload that video even offload that camera from the bot - stream to a laptop or bigger comp so you send only control signals to the arduino board. So your bot would do something like below 1. Localized decision making (balance, servo speed, damping , breaking etc) 2. Overall decision making - bigger goal of the bot offloaded on laptop/Comp, control signal sent to compliment or override local controls. have fun ..

A someone who knows a bit about robotics and electronics, I'd recommend the new Arduino Robot: http://arduino.cc/en/Main/Robot It has all the essentials you need to build pretty sophisticated robots; the Compass, IR Sensor, 360 degree turn on the spot, 2 micro-controllers, LCD, sensor ports distributed around.... it's a really well thought out, sound basis for robotics. Here's an interesting account of the story behind it: http://blog.makezine.com/2013/05/14/introducing-new-column-from-arduinos-massimo-banzi/ As for the Lego Mindstorms ( I have one); it's good but basic and you're constrained by what your allowed to do. Put it this way... Mindstorms is the Apple iPad (polished and fancy) whilst Arduino Robot is your fav. Linux machine (very capable, expandable and gives you a sound basis on which to build).

Arduino is coming out with the Yun, another combination of non-real time Linux chip and real-time ATmega chip, and it includes WiFi. It also is ready to go when you power it on, and allows you to upload sketches over the air. It looks like a better deal and better design to me for many applications.

The UDOO has HDMI output and some other features, but it's not so clear to me what the advantage of UDOO is over just plugging a regular Arduino into a Raspberry Pi via USB (and the resulting combo is cheaper to boot).

Why not a android phone and the ADK board? Sort of the best of both worlds with a sacrifice in footprint..

Hi, this one could be for you: http://arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoardADK ADK provides the API and on Android side, since 2.3.4 I believe. You can use all of Arduinos features to wire your hardware, you can even do time-critical things on it. But you have to code on both devices. Sparkfun had another interface kit for Android which worked also with older versions: https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10585 Regards Flo

he's actually just trolling to someone post links to cheap adk clones.
http://arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoardADK

basically it's an arduino that'll act as usb host so you can talk from your android phone to it.
or you can use bluetooth with some few dollars bluetooth dongle.

but the thing is, quite easily these solutions start costing more than a raspberry pi costs, so some simplicity and battery use are the advantages against that..

Sure, sorry I don't want to come to off insulting :-). The Freeduino is a free or mostly free version of the Arduino, just built with off the self parts and can be prototyped on a bread board.

http://www.freeduino.org/about.html

Has some examples of the boards you can design and build. Now I'm assuming you know what a breadboard or prototype board is so I'll skip that. To sample chips you can literally go to a site like Maxim or National Semi Conductor and request one or several chips for free, these are called samples. You can actually go to Atmel and sample the microcontroller from them, you can go to Maxim and sample the RS-232 or USB chip from them and etc... By using sampling you can get most / all of these chips for free and then it's literally a case of laying out the design on a breadboard.

This is a very good guide: http://arduino.cc/en/Main/Standalone and for more circuits or ideas you can always visit this site: http://www.freeduino.org/

The reason I pitched the idea this way to you is that you actually get a decent amount of experience in electronics building the micro-controller system and by using a breadboard you get a great expansion area to test and design new circuits. It's also simple to move this design over to a PCB if you really want to and there are tons of guides on that.

Cheers and I hope this helps you!

ARM chips are 3.3V, surface mount

Surface mount is a moot point in the face of an inexpensive breakout board, unless you're looking at a size-constrained application. You can have your own PCBs manufactured professionally for $10 if they're small (5x5cm), so SMD parts are viable as long as the pitch isn't too small--I've soldered small SMD parts many times with both a heat-gun and a soldering iron. I like the heat-gun better, but the soldering iron is more commonly available. That said, if Arduino is a contender, then use of breakout boards is a non-issue.

Yeah, that's way easier than sticking a chip in a breadboard. Everybody has a hot air solder rework station at home and manufactures their own PCBs.

ARM chips ... are very delicate electrically.

That's a pretty sweeping statement. Do you have any evidence to back that up? You know that NXP's line of ARM micros are all 5V tolerant, right? And ST's ARM lineup all have at least *some* 5V tolerant pins, most of them are mostly 5V tolerant. The STM32F4 which is on the discovery board has 138 of 140 5V tolerant pins. TI's micro that's on the launchpad also has all 5V tolerant I/O.

It's nothing to do with 5V tolerance. Read this for a while then come back and tell me ARM chips would take that kind of abuse.

AVR chips have enough volts for an LED

If this is an issue, you're doing it wrong. VCC--|>|---/\/\/\---MCU pin. With 5V tolerant I/O, you no longer have a problem.

Again, nothing to do with 5V tolerance.

Read the Arduino forums, the first thing most people do with their Arduino is connect LEDs to it (usually without resistors...) In their eyes a board which can drive LEDs directly is better than one which can't (or which dies because they didn't put in a resistor). I've seen people try to drive 64 LEDs in parallel from one Arduino pin then go on the forums and complain they're "a bit dim".

So for most people this is an issue. They want 5V from their I/O pins with at least enough current for an LED. They're not engineers, have never read a datasheet and don't know you're not supposed to do it.

(Plus I think "eight UARTs, four SPIs, four I2Cs and up to 27 timers" is moot for most people...)

Just because you don't need it for a particular application doesn't mean that having it available is bad.

No, but most people don't see it as a reason to choose ARM over AVR.