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.NET Gadgeteer — Microsoft's Arduino Killer?
mikejuk writes ".NET Gadgeteer is a new open source platform, from Microsoft Research, based on the use of the .NET Micro Framework. It brings with it lots of hardware modules that are backed by object oriented software. You simply buy the modules you need — switches, GPS, WiFi etc — that you need and plug them together. The software, based on C#, is also open source, and comes with classes that let you use the modules without having to go 'low level.' Is this a competitor for the Arduino?"
little pricey to be a arduino killer
Can anyone think of any example when a [fill-in-the-blank-popular-or-niche-object-of-consumption] killer has ever killed a [fill-in-the-blank]? Calling something a [fill-in-the-blank] killer seems to admit at the outset that the market belongs to [fill-in-the-blank].
Has Microsoft produced any hardware platform in the past 20 years that was a "X killer"? All the ones I've seen tend to choke on their own drool instead of "killing" a competitor.
The type of person who cares about open anything is the same type who will avoid anything with a Microsoft logo. That alone will kill any potential this platform has.
Can I have their iPod killer though? Sounds intriguing.
Zuuune!
Simple reason: The base board looks like it needs connectors best I can tell and costs 4x as much as an arduino board. Plus I'm sure the MS board requires windows. I have an arduino because I can interface with it on different platforms and it didn't cost a ton to get into.
I predict that this will be as successful as Microsoft's "ipod killer". What was that thing called again?
This looks like a solution in search of a problem. How often must someone go low-level with an arduino? It's the community, not the hardware that have made that platform successful. And if I need to do something, chances are someone has already written code to do just that, and made it available to the community. I don't have to code much of anything, only tweak what I find.
-I only code in BASIC.-
Been there too many times to admit, bought the latest Microsoft gadget (over my better judgment) only to be cast adrift by them as soon as they realize that there are not going to earn buckets of cash. I have been set adrift more than Gilligan by those people. Remember the Microsoft phone? The one that only ran in Windows98 and they refused to make a driver for the next OS version. Ah yes and of course the mighty Zune, iPod killer extraordinare. Actually the Zune was my brother-in-laws debacle, but I tried to talk him out of it, so I still feel somewhat responsible.
14 .NET Gadgeteer compatible sockets
Configurable on-board LED
Configuration switches
Based on GHI Electronics EMX module
72MHz. 32-bit ARM7 processor
4.5 MB Flash
16 MB RAM
LCD controller
Full TCP/IP Stack with SSL, HTTP, TCP, UDP, DHCP
Ethernet, WiFi driver and PPP ( GPRS/ 3G modems) and DPWS
USB host
USB Device with specialized libraries to emulate devices like thumb-drive, virtual COM (CDC), mouse, keyboard
76 GPIO Pin
2 SPI (8/16bit)
I2C
4 UART
2 CAN Channels
7 10-bit Analog Inputs.
10-bit Analog Output (capable of WAV audio playback)
4-bit SD/MMC Memory card interface
6 PWM
OneWire interface (available on any IO).
Built-in Real Time Clock (RTC) with the suitable crystal
Processor register access
OutputCompare for generating waveforms with high accuracy
RLP allowing users to load native code (C/Assembly) for real-time requirements.
Extended double-precision math class
FAT File System
Cryptography (AES and XTEA)
Low power and hibernate support
In-field update (from SD, network or other)
Price $120
To compare with Netduino ($34.95)
Atmel 32-bit microcontroller
Speed: 48MHz, ARM7
Code Storage: 128 KB
RAM: 60 KB
2.1"x1.8"x0.5"
You get twice the speed for almost 4 times the cost.
The real win is memory. With 16MB RAM, you can actually get stuff done.
Why not go to the supplier and source exactly what you need?
If microsoft has something 'killer'. They'll fuck it up.
History says so.
...in the same sentence. I think most electronics DIY'ers (including me) are Linux/C/assembler types who have no interest in supporting MS..
I don't think so. The success of the Arduino revolves around how easy it is to get it to reach out and touch something using all the pin interfaces (turn on a LED, control a motor, use PCM to regulate your barbeque temperature. Now there does seem to be a small overlap, it's can't complete with the arduino over it's entire range of applications.
I wont say this will kill anything, but it sounds fun. I'm betting this works with kinect soon. And, as a C# developer (along with many other langs) this sounds like a quick way to start projects to teach my kids robotics. Currently I still lean towards Mindstorm, but options are always good.
Where genius and insanity become confused true wisdom is found
I don't think this will be an Arduino killer. Arduino has too big a lead, and too much traction in the DIY, hacker, and arts communities. But it will appeal to companies that do software and are looking to break into embedded hardware. They're already familiar with .NET, C#, and Visual Studio, and they won't mind paying a premium for the hardware, because it's Microsoft-backed and because they already know the dev tools.
It might also find a home in the industrial space. Lots of manufacturing facilities have bright people who program PLC's and the like, and are quite capable of learning the tools and building simple stuff that can round out a company's automation efforts.
I don't love Microsoft, but kudos to them for branching out creatively in an effort to shore up their sagging fortunes.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Sounds a lot like the Java SunSpot: http://www.sunspotworld.com/
The Arduino is cheap and plentiful. Hard to see how these will ever be either.
Creating a devices that come with software bits that enable the control and interfacing between your programs and the hardware devices which more easily enables you to make the devices do useful things!! I can't believe no one has thought of this before!! Next thing you know, someone will tie all of these software-hardware interface modules (let's call them drivers for short) into a bundle that lets them share a common pool of resources such as processor time and memory more efficiently... "in an object oriented way" of course because unless it was done with "objects" it couldn't be new or novel could it?
I know -- laugh me right off of slashdot right here and now. The second programming language I learned was assembly language for 8 and 16 bit Motorola processors. (The first was BASIC.) Assembly language taught me how computers really work. All this "object oriented" crap is just an abstraction that helps people see programming in ways that aren't even natural to the machines and how they run. I prefer to see things as they are, not how I want them to be. It's all still bits, bytes, signals, registers, inputs and outputs. Sure, you can imagine it's all some sort of flowers and sunshine microcosm where causes and effects happen magically just like they do in the real world (hint: the real world isn't magical either and there ain't no god that makes it all work either). It's all a bunch of tiny, tiny operations that accomplish bigger things. (Hell, for that matter, even the complex instructions in today's processors are really just simple instructions running on smaller processors... anyone ever wonder what "microcode" is and why/how we always see that "microcode update" line in the booting of Linux? Yeah... I knew and have known for a long time... long enough to chuckle to myself when the "RISC vs CISC" debates were going on. (Hint: It's ALL "RISC" now even if it wasn't in the early 8/16 bit days... it would have been horribly more difficult to scale processors to the size and performance we see today without building it all out on RISC elements.)
It has all been done before and they will continue re-doing it again and again because new ideas are truly rare. I wonder how long it will be before we see an " -- over the internet" or an " -- on a handheld device" versions of these same things.
Let me see...
No Linux? So what's the point about it being open-source then? Yes I know Windows has plenty of open-source software (lots of it pretty good too), but Microsoft has no trust in the FLOSS community left. This is hardly going to help if they can't even bother to make it officially support Mono (since it uses C#).
I don't even use Linux anymore and I don't see the point of using this instead of something established and mature like Arduino. Yet anyway.
Does it come with the Ctrl-Alt-Del, 3-key "System Stability Module (SSM)"?
For most of us, the absolutely massive amount of time it takes to get used to it far exceeds the amount of time that it'll ever save us. That results in a huge productivity loss for us.
It's not just Microsoft's products that suffer from this, either. It's basically every existing software product that originally had a UI created by developers, but has since had its UI "reworked" by graphic designers for more recent releases.
Firefox is a superb example of this. Graphic designers have turned it into an absolutely unusable pile of shit recently. By default, the menu bar and status bar are now gone. That makes it a royal pain in the ass to access much of its basic functionality! At least it was usable back when it was programmers creating the UI.
GNOME is another great example. While initially the work of programmers, graphic designers took more control over the direction of the UI a few years back, and now it is the laughing stock of the FOSS desktop community. It has gone from being usable to being a pile of shit, and that's putting it very nicely.
I really like the Netduino. I find it to be affordable, arduino shield compatible, and write the code with C#.
Has no one heard of the Netduino - it's been out for a quite a while. Arduino-like, and programmed with .NET Micro Framework:
http://netduino.com/
My comments are my own, and do not represent the views of my employer, my spouse, my children, or my cats.
First: MS. Hobbyists, especially the microcontroller crowd, are usually aiming for independence, interconnectivity and freedom of choices. Most microtinkerers I know were even shy to touch the Arduino because it came along with its own development tools that smelled like "you need them to do anything with it". Only after reading the specs, seeing the PCB around the chip and noticing that it is pretty much simply a (rather well designed) pimped out devboard, essentially a "standardized breadboard plus programmer", they started to use it. Many I know still refuse to use the compiler that came with it and stick with AVR Studio or GCC. Some even consider that "too far from the metal" and stick with ASM, personally I think one can overdo his zeal for independence and "feeling your controller", but I'm not judging them. Case in point, microdevs hate being locked into something. Despite the perpetual ATMEL vs PIC battle (and the self-chosen lock-in with either platform, since few people I know really want to work with both).
Second: Microcontrollers are still very, very tiny in their specs. The average affordable model measures their clock in the Megahertz and their flash rom (program memory) in the kilobytes. And for that a .net platform? Are you kidding? Now, I might be prejudiced in this matter, but unless they somhow then turn that .net program into very tight assembler, the 72MHz Arm will feel like a 8MHz Atmel. Now, that Arm implementation MS is offering has 4500kB of flash. Pretty much, considering most AVRs still measure their flash ram in the single and double digit kilobytes. But will that .net compiler spit out native code? Or will a good deal of those 4.5MB be taken up by some virtual machine that then tries to run the object code? Essentially the question is, how much "work" can you push into the flash, how many instructions can you possibly put into it before you're running out of space?
And finally: As a extension from the first point, MC developers love to tinker and toy with their gadgets. And they love expanding on them. Having a wide selection of addons is nice, but how easy is it to roll your own? In case I do not want that Ethernet expansion, can I make my own? Are the specs known? What about the legal shit, can I publish what I create without paying MS for it?
I'd be wary to take the information provided at face value. 72MHz look far more than the measly 20-48MHz Arduino offers (depending on the board you choose). And 4.5MB certainly is far more than 128KB of flash rom. The key question is, though, how much of that rom is usable, how do the processors perform in comparison, and how easy is it to roll your own expansions.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Look at the specs. Arduino's "beefy" MCU is 16 MHz, 8 bits. This is 72 MHz, 32 bits. Arduino draws a sub-10 uA sleep current. This thing draws a 40 mA (yes, milliamp) sleep current. They're completely different devices targeting completely different markets. Talk of "killing" Arduino is just meant to draw eyeballs and clicks.
Gadgeteer seems more like an NXT killer because it is about plugging in modules and writing the software.
Arduino, well, that attracts a different crowd. In some ways, Arduino users seem to be a bit more simplistic. You're limited to one shield (unless you do careful planning), the IDE is very straight forward, etc.. In other ways Aduino users are more sophisticated. It is easier to build a small circuit on a breadboard and connect it to the Arduino with jumper wires. You could do that with the Gadgeteer hardware, but it doesn't look quite as simple so I doubt as many people will do it.
I think that the Windows only bit will limit its use too. Have the people who called the Gadgeteer an Arduino killer really looked at the Arduino userbaseà Lots of Windows users, sure. Tonnes of artists and geeks who use Mac or Linux too.
I wont say this will kill anything, but it sounds fun. I'm betting this works with kinect soon.
Good call.
Kinect Services for RDS provides sample services that use the Kinect for Windows SDK to allow access to the Depth and RGB data from a Kinect sensor. In addition to a service for a real Kinect, there is also a service for a simulated Kinect that works with the RDS simulator. A sample application is included that shows how to use a Kinect on a simulated robot to wander around and avoid obstacles.
Kinect Services for RDS 2008 R3
The only thing that joker would be killing is my wallet!
(Arduino Uno Board ~ $26)
I'm, I guess, what you'd call a professional arduino programmer. been working exclusively for the past 2 years or so on a combo hardware/firmware project. I did the hardware design, proto testing and driver+apps coding.
and so, I'm pretty familiar with hardware and operational costs of getting arduinos up and running from scratch (we did our own board called the LCDuino-1). when I look at the stuff mentioned in the article, I see more zeroes behind non-zeros than should be there. just too expensive for an 'arduino killer' platform or system.
I'm not against this *because* its MS; and I'm willing to consider other alternatives, but this does not at all look cost effective, just from the pure cost of boards and parts and cables POV.
otoh, the ARM systems (so-called 'plug computers' from marvell) are the next open-source and viable step up from arduino-land. those seagate dockstars and pogoplugs are common examples of those (and nice and hackable, too). with those, you get a full debian linux stack in there; not some mickeymouse 'other thing' inside that you now have to learn and deal with (and debug).
for me, its arduino for the extreme low end; and small/tiny/fanless linux boxes for the "$50 and up" kind of range. they even mix well; if you need a tcp/ip presence, use one of those dockstars and have full ip-tables and all that neat protective stuff there; then have a serial link to the arduino for when it needs to report 'back up'. great way to add remote web control safely to the arduino realtime systems.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Finally---verifiable proof that parallel universes exist! I'm particularly impressed by the remark about Linux conferences. Oh and did you go to this years Sundance Festival? I think there was a film about you!!
So, I guess then being from Microsoft, it will be just like Arduino in that all the software *and* all the hardware designs are open source, so anybody can make and sell the hardware if they feel like it. Right? And people can take the hardware designs and modify them to make special purpose version, and be able to release updates to the software tool chain to support the new hardware?
Somehow, this just doesn't pass the giggle test.
The software, based on C#
Nope.. next!
I went to a BSD conference and didn't see either one. Those stupid geeks were even running open source BSD on laptops with wireless and multimedia; anyone with proper upbringing knows you don't do that! I suppose the 30 million GNU/Linux users haven't bought their macs yet, but soon will. And experts predict IOS will dominate the mobile market, right? Oh no wait, it's to be two-thirds Linux by 2013
Yeah, yeah yeah. It seems somtimes like an article is not complete unless it points a finger at our arrogance and tells us that we need to humble ourselves, lest wonderful things fail to get off the ground. That sounds so generally true that it's hard to argue against it. Surely it is the "for the children!" of IT news. The problem is, those who say this feel no burden of proof to demonstrate that arrogance, and no other cause, is sufficient to explain every relevant event. Am I alone in having well-founded suspicions against those who don't recognize, let alone satisfy, a legitimate burden of proof prior to making solid claims?
... damn, that's so fucking arrogant. To extend in scope this principle, down to the average user and instructions any literate adult should be able to follow, and observe with much strong evidence that too many users fail to perform the most basic tasks because they refuse to even attempt to follow the most basic, illustrated, step-by-step instructions ... and then to have the guts, the nerve, the blatant audacity to suggest that the person who fits this description (their choice) has actively solicited, invited, yea created the very problems they repetitively experience ... why that's just fucking arrogant. How dare you! Yeah, sure.
Naturally we're all a bunch of arrogant jackasses. Why, our very belief that anyone who puts a large amount of time and energy and effort, who reads the volumes we have read, who does the research we have done, who obtains the experience we have acquired, can master technology
That description of the problem is a solid paragraph. How about a nice, simple solution to a problem that's not nearly so complex as it seems?
There are two ultimate reasons why someone won't yield to you and just see things your way like you want them to: 1) you're right and they are too proud to admit it, 2) they're right and your own ego won't let you entertain their idea long enough to test its validity. If the second point is true, you add hypocrisy to the very arrogance of which you accuse them. There is absolutely nothing arrogant about refusing to believe what you know to be false, however badly someone else may want you to and call you names for not doing so.
I wish we as a human race would all just fucking learn this lesson once and for all. That's my heart's desire. No, it's not a relativity of equally valid ideas. It's a willingness to fairly compare ideas to see which are actually superior. For that you must have the courage to abandon even your most favorite, pet idea the moment it is shown to be false. Your love of truth must be greater than your love of being right. It's not easy, but it just can't be that hard.
$250.00 for the starter kit, pretty expensive toys I'd say!
So it's real FOSS. Cool. No matter how much corporate MS sucks, MS Research is usually great and their use of AL2 instead of some "Shared Source" license makes Gadgeteer fully Free. One could even port it away from .NET and MS could do nothing about it. AL2 even includes a royalty-free patent license.
Where's a good repository of GPL source code for PIC MCUs? PIC16F, PIC18F, PIC24F?
--
make install -not war
And with all the 10 pin ribbon connections and little in the way of direct bus access, it's a different level of hardware.
And using .NET, who cares? But 4.5Mb of flash! Woot woot! Don't get blinded by looking at the flash.
For those prices, why wouldn't I just get a gumstix and run Mono on it? The gumstix boards also host ARM CPUs that are clocked 10x faster.
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
TL;DR: "You kids get off my lawn"
May apologies, but you are on the wrong side of history. In the 50's, there were "old guard" programmers who wanted to program in octal instead of assembly so they could really understand what the computer was doing. In the 60's, the "old guard" fought COBOL and FORTRAN in favor of assembly so "they could understand what the computer was doing". In then 70's, they fought virtual memory because "only with real memory could you understand what the computer was doing". In the 80's, they fought SQL and wanted to keep COBOL so "they could understand what the computer was really doing". In the 90's they fought GUIs because "only with a command line could you really understand what the computer was doing". And in the last decade, they fought bytecode and interpreted languages because "only with a compiled language can you really understand what the computer is doing".
This is not to say that every proposed new language and concept is good -- they aren't. There was an research computer where the compiler was in hardware (yes, individual gates and thing to parse your source code), along with the entire OS. There have been visual languages by the dozen; almost all were losers.
But, overall, history isn't on your side. The higher level languages and abstractions actual make people more productive programmers. Both Java and .NET have been accepted as "good" by an enormous number of working programmers and their hard-nosed managers; they are here to stay.
Want a sig like mine? Join ACM's SigSig today!
"LED module ($15)"
fuck off
Your Mom goes to Linux conferences!
This sig is not paradoxical or ironic.
This sounds like it is practically lego like. If you get light, motion, temperature, humidity, pressure, gps, accerometers, gyros, magnetometers and motor/gyro controllers for this thing, you'll hit almost the entire robotics, weather station hobbyist market. That's a fairly substantial market and would make it worthwhile.
However, I'm an arduino hobbyist primarily because I can open a catalog from some place like digikey and be able to write code to interface with just about anything in there.
Yeah, if you aren't a hardware guy, you might want someone to have already figured out what capacitors, resistors, transistors, diodes you might need to interface with a sensor or whatnot and what the specs of those components should be. The prepackaged modules fit the bill for that is much the same way as an arduino shield.
If you aren't a low level software guy you might be a bit overwhelmed when reading specs full of timing information and not want to deal with it. But there's definitely a place for a simple low-level microcontroller platform that actually lets you get to the bare metal and this .NET Gadgeteer isn't it.
People can say what they want about it being from Microsoft and using C#. I personally like C# and can buy something from Microsoft without feeling dirty afterward. I think it's a good idea, but executed terribly.
The price is obscene for what you get, and the modules are nearly as ridiculous. $15 for a LCD module, really? Really? One LCD? I think a Netduino is a far more worthwhile tool which also supports the .NET Micro Framework if you want to use VB or C#.
This is definitely not an Arduino competitor and I doubt it even wants to be considered one. This is for a much higher level user than traditional microcontroller programmers. When I read this, I think about something like Lego Mindstorm.
I have been playing around with arduinos for awhile now. Last year Sparkfun started carrying a .net opensource hardware called the fez. It was a garrage company building boards and pointing folks to VIsual Studio with a couple of add on libraries (written by the proprietor) . The article seems to be trying to say that it was a Microsoft project from the start. I don't think so. That is not the way I recall it at all. Anyone else remember this board before Microsoft "rewrote" the history?
No, the Fez was a seperate project. .NET Gadgeteer was a common interface type system developed within Microsoft Research that uses boards that also use the .NETMF. So when they went out looking for partners to develop more hardware. One company is GHI, another is Secret Labs the makers of the Netduino boards. Secret Labs doesn't have any products for sell yet, but are working on projects. So Microsoft is not rewriting history, you just don't know enough of it to know the difference.
Uh, no. GHI Electronics has been the company manufacturing Fez boards since early 2010, and they're still doing it now.
Microsoft hasn't "rewritten history" anywhere. The older Fez boards were just Arduino-like proto boards that ran the .NET Micro Framework. The Gadgeteer project is different (of Microsoft Research's specification and GHI's hardware), with the unified interface for all the components. That is what Microsoft did in fact create.
Microsoft isn't lying to anyone. Take off the tinfoil hat.
You could run Mono on a *new* iPod Touch for the same price as just the combination of the whimpy CPU and display modules. And if you do, you'll get wifi, accelerometer, bluetooth, camera, video, Flash, battery, audio i/o, and a few switches thrown in for free. I don't understand the target market here, unless it's people who want to feel like they are low-level breadboarding gods because they plugged a ribbon cable into something and compiled some C# on it.
Over the last 10 years the only products Microsoft has succeeded in killing are it's own
I'd rather have one of these: http://www.mbed.org/ I've been using these for personal projects and various tasks at work, and they've been a dream to work with, especially coming from the world of closed-source, proprietary PIC microcontrollers and the expensive compilers they require to get a decent high-level language working.
I switched to mbed and lpcexpresso from the 805x series and they are great.
512k flash (mbed has 2 MB flash extra for storage) , 64k ram, ethernet, pwm, adc, dac, I2S, I2C, serial you name it.
This is a product that they will be able to order from right out of the catalog, and at better prices than people are talking about here.
There are certainly many cheaper products out there (my favorite right now is the 'ET-STM32 Stamp') but if I was looking to build up an embedded computing curriculum for a school, these gadgets are well worth a look.
No.
If there isn't a cool parts store near you, then you order from Digikey or Mouser if you want industrial-style supply catalogs, or Sparkfun or Adafruit if you want friendly hobbyist stuff. Or you can go to a less cool Radio Shack, who don't carry most of the fancy stuff (though they're about to start carrying Arduino) but are good for basic ICs, LEDs, resistors, capacitors, breadboards, and soldering irons.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Seeed Studios makes Grove System, a connectorized bunch of input and output parts that plug in to an Arduino shield, and also sells Arduinos, Netduinos, Zigbee things, and *duino clones. Grove is $39 for the basic set of ~10 things (and has various extra frobs available.) (And realistically, you'll still want to get a breadboard and bag of assorted LEDs and some resistors.) They previously made a similar system called Electronic Brick, which is a 3-wire interface; Grove is 4-wire so it can support either I2C or analog.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
is one way to go to plain AVR devices. I like plain AVR C programming. you can get a simple MCU for $2/piece, so its realistic even for things where you need 10s of MCUs (or where the MCU is most likely lost).
Why not ladder logic like the rest of the industry uses for PLC's? (arduino excepted and even then, it SHOULD be using that instead.)
Stupid is as stupid dies.
The purpose of DIY is doing it yourself.
The whole description of this .net gageteer thing is
That's typical of the cognitive dissonance that Microsoft's marketing department displays about anything real world.
(No, I don't count business management IT as real world. But it is as close as Microsoft seems to be able to get to the real world.)
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
With Microsoft's device, you have to buy certain modules to do X work. You can't just take 3 LEDs, a Servo and make something. Only their modules will fit, and only their modules have software that is compatible with them. This is the same market that Phidget was going after -- you don't need to be an EE or know how to solder to make something.
Or if you are interested in something similar but compatible with many of the Arduino products...
http://netduino.com/
Microcontroller development has come a long way and I think this only helps drive the creation of better, friendlier dev tools. Despite the higher price, I like the non-fixed layout + ribbon cable accesories, 72 MHz, ethernet, MULTIPLE UART, and WIFI. Almost a one-stop shop. Conspicuously missing are DB9 modules and a multi-voltage power supply module (1.8, 3.3, 5, 12 V). Also, Visual Studio is a solid IDE not worth complaining about, and C# is also fine.
If you go to the company's website and actually look at the board and the better photos on the starter kit entry, you'll note that the cables are all standard 10-pin ribbons. In other words, the same kind of cables that are used for connecting serial ports to motherboards, but without removing one of the wires from the ribbon.
If something more Arduino-like is what you want, look at their Fez Panda-II. It's $39.95 and has Arduino-compatible headers.
Both boards are built around a 72 MHz ARM7 that just happens to have Microsoft's .Net runtime preinstalled. Don't want to use .Net? Rather develop for the bare metal? That's what the JTAG port is for.
It is the tenor of the stuff.
If you don't understand, read down a bit where some others who use Arduino regularly spell it out for you:
Too much power, too much cost, too much stuff happening that I don't need or want happening.
How much support from a run time does it take to toggle a bit of IO?
I think this sort of thing could find a lot of use in school programs, whether robotics, engineering or programming courses. Schools would like the MS part and being able to use a "high level" language would make it popular to supplement some programming courses. MS would certainly cut deals on price to get the schools involved.
While all of us here know that it's really simple to program an arduino, or propeller, or for that matter a pic with assembler, I think schools will be able to more easily justify an expense if MS is behind it along with a .net api. While I would prefer them to take a different approach, anything that will get kids into tinkering with home made projects is a very very good thing.
I have a fair amount of experience with assembler and some limited c programming on microcontrollers (mostly pic, but some propeller), but I sometimes wish I could just knock off a quick proof of concept with an easy language and a board with enough power & memory that I don't have to worry too much about how I do things. I'd likely never do that for a real project, but in the end the most important/expensive thing is my time.
If a tool is appropriate for a particular job, I don't think you should lose sleep over whose name is on the box. This is the main reason I rely mostly on open source solutions, and also why I sometimes use closed, propriety ones.
The advantage of the Arduino (And all the other small microprocessors like the attiny,atmega, pic etc) is that you can play with simple circuits using a breadboard and then even at hobby level create a standalone pcb to make various projects (Just search instructables, hack a day, google for atmega,attiny,pic etc) . Looking at the back of this "Arduino Killer" shows that this is not going compete unless you have some fairly serious hardware to create double sided PCB's and be able to mount BGA chips and be able to source the chips for $2-3 a time. (looking through the linked site I can't even see if you can buy the main processor standalone, the cheapest board the FEZ Mini is $39 a pop, and seems to get a button / LDR component confused?!) This is just a toy, for creating one project at a time, that does have some nice,but hellish expensive, modules to plug into it and nothing more.
That sounds great compared to $30ish for an Arduino compatible USB host. That is until you see that the main board is 4 times the Arduino price.
Microsoft killed many a thing, however they did it buying said company/product not competing fairly, this is a competitor to arduino alright, but its no competition at all, its expensive, requires .net and MS software, aside from the fun part of doing all that the IDE does not require you to do, why would any self respecting DIY touch this thing with something shorter than a 10 foot pole?
Microsoft Robotics Development Studio has nothing to do with the .NET Micro Framework family. That's not to say that it's not really neat, and it's not to say that someday a .NET Gadgeteer device won't someday connect to a Kinect (lol! see what I did there?), but RDS targets a studlier class of device, not the cheap-n-cheerful little .NET MF-class of thing at all.
Not so much an arduino killer as a BugLabs competitor. Lets gloss, more bare boards.
http://www.buglabs.net/
Maybe even a nerdkit++
http://www.nerdkits.com/kits/
I think they are wishing for their hay day back. Hay day being, back when people were building their own machines and Microsoft was significant.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
Seems to me a big advantage of this over existing solutions is the ability to do interactive, step-level debugging. So instead of downloading (or is it uploading) your compiled project and seeing if it will run, you can step through your code and inspect variables and states as you go along.
All this "object oriented" crap is just an abstraction that helps people
Which is why it's popular. The name of the game is getting shit done, and if something abstracts something in a way that makes things easier, then it's a good thing.
Bingo. "The name of the game is getting shit done." I could not have said that better myself.
This fact of life is a true thorn in the side of the "open or nothing" mentality, and I'm glad I'm finally seeing it on Slashdot.
sidenote: the UIDs on this page are crazy high... the lower numbered old-hats like myself usually (irrationally) hate anything non-open on habit alone.
Seriously?! I'd hate to try debugging after all those cables have been pulled around a bit.
Wow. I mean, I've done a fair amount of assembler coding, myself, but the abstraction that we create in order to use higher-level languages isn't, I think, the disaster that you seem to think it is. I'm not sure what 'flowers and sunshine microcosm' you think the rest of us are a part of. We think that 3rd generation languages are magic, I guess? I mean, I don't know why we would think that way. Is it because I didn't write my c compiler from scratch, myself? I mean, I've written a compiler. I know basically how it's done. I don't feel the need to re-implement it just because I didn't do it myself.
Is it that we can't truly understand computers as well as you do? Because... I guess because young people have no respect? Or something? I dunno. But maybe you should take up some kind of relaxing hobby.
Anyway. Obviously, you can already operate these things over the Internet, and the article has a picture of a man holding the components in his hand, so your last (or one might say 'only') point is moot. But I guess you're so awesome at computers, you don't have to RTFA to know what it's about.
That's IF you give a damn about security, because the "Linux is more secure" b.s. is falling apart rapidly & daily (especially in light of the daily attacks on ANDROID almost, such as this one "HOT OFF THE PRESSES" today:
http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/11/08/01/2242233/Android-Trojan-Records-Phone-Calls
as well as the fact that phishers &/or spammers PREFER breaking into MySQL/PHP based webservers on Linux!).
Think that's bullshit? Ok, disprove this:
Time to BLOW the upcoming "forums 'Illogic-Logic'" spinmaster crap to hell with MORE facts & actual logic + documented facts! Ready? Read on:
---
1st - Linux also doesn't have as high quality drivers or as many because board makers KNOW what is "running the show/market " out there, Windows - so, they cater to it immensely!
2nd - Nor does Linux have as many games, by FAR, either... this is mostly the home market in fact!)
3rd - Not only that. but Linux, in its KERNEL ONLY mind you? Has 3.5x the unpatched security vulnerabilities Windows 7 has (which IS a complete "distro" with all of its parts, not just a kernel only)!
4th - Despite all those "Open 'SORES'" eyes (most of whom couldn't code to SAVE THEIR LIVES mind you) allegedly poring over Linux code, how come it has that many more unpatched bugs than Windows 7 has, hmmm??
Closed source is HARDER for hacker/crackers to attack as well, because you're stuck either disassembling it (especially tough with kernel level debuggers) OR fuzzing it, either is tougher than searching out problems in Linux, which you just load into a compiler & step trace its "Open 'SORES'" code with to find screwups in security... hence it still has more security bugs, AND, they are unpatched (despite all the "Open 'SORES'" eyes poring over it, lol!)
Fact, period!
5th - In fact, Linux's kernel ALONE has 3.5x the # of unpatched bugs the ENTIRE SUITE/ARRAY OF WHAT MICROSOFT GIVES YOU TO DO BUSINESS & DEVELOPMENT WITH!
Proof? Ok:
This data's ALL from a respected source (secunia.com) for known security vulnerabilities unpatched:
---
Vulnerability Report: Microsoft SQL Server 2008: (08/02/2011)
http://secunia.com/advisories/product/21744/
Unpatched 0% (0 of 1 Secunia advisories)
Vulnerability Report: Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.x: (08/02/2011)
http://secunia.com/advisories/product/17543/
Unpatched 0% (0 of 6 Secunia advisories)
Vulnerability Report: Microsoft Exchange Server 2010: (08/02/2011)
http://secunia.com/advisories/product/28234/
Unpatched 0% (0 of 0 Secunia advisories)
Vulnerability Report: Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010: (08/02/2011)
http://secunia.com/advisories/product/29809/
Unpatched 0% (0 of 0 Secunia advisories)
Vulnerability Report: Microsoft Forefront Endpoint Protection 2010: (08/02/2011)
http://secunia.com/advisories/product/34343/
Unpatched 0% (0 of 1 Secunia advisories)
Vulnerability Report: Microsoft Office 2010: (08/02/2011)
http://secunia.com/advisories/product/30529/?task=advisories
Unpatched 0% (0 of 7 Secunia advisories)
Vulnerability Report: Microsoft Virtual PC 2007: (08/02/2011)
http://secunia.com/advisories/product/14315/
Unpatched 0% (0 of 1 Secunia advisories)
Vulnerability Report:
Corrections duly noted. Thanks for the info.
I agree with most of your post, but I have to say for the extreme low end, straight-up AVR is the better way to go. This board: http://www.adafruit.com/products/296 is awesome. You get all the easy programming of the 'duino, onboard USB so there is no clunky FTDI chip, a JTAG interface for debugging, and it can be used with Eclipse on any platform, so you get a real IDE to navigate through all your code, browse headers and such.
Once again, slashdot answers itself: http://developers.slashdot.org/story/11/08/03/2027207/Wasnobr-wbrnobrNET-All-a-Mistake
best quotes: .NET was to lure developers away from writing portable apps in Java. As long as the apps stay unportable, those developers' customers remain stuck with Windows.
I thought the purpose of
From the beginning it was clear that .NET was a Windows first system, anyone else would be on their own. No matter how good the design and concept of .NET may be, while it's under MS control, it is fundamentally subjugated to keeping people on Windows. And while that may have sounded good to the executives at MS, it's a terrible way to address any threat they felt from Java. There is also the pressure from MS to have .NET support all the latest/greatest things in Windows, which is a backwards model. ... In short, the .NET team being part of MS put them in the position of having to support two masters, and that's always a no win scenario.
What .NET has brought to the Microsoft programmer is a decade of lucrative employment. That's not a bad thing. The trick now is to convert back to C++ and ... I'm tempted to say "go out and get real jobs" but that would be unfair.
What happens when your vendor decides to move on, just like they have done many times before? Your application is now a ticking time bomb, set to explode at the support cutoff date. Hello did you learn the lesson from the mainframe era? Don't code to vendor specific APIs. Stay platform-neutral and you give yourself a much wider range of platforms for your application. It gives you much more leverage in your hardware purchasing, if you are free to choose any platform. The folks in the trucking industry figured this stuff out a long time ago. It is shocking to me to see people, today, intentionally choosing vendor lock-in.
I was actually quite surprised. I started playing with Arduinos a year or so ago, and found that all of my local Radio Shacks have a section about 6 feet wide, 10 drawers high, with actual electronic components in them, as well as soldering stuff and a variable amount of other electronics on the wall (typically a couple of PIC or Basic Stamp sets.) Half of them are various audio connectors, and half of what's left are collections (Bag O' Resistors, Bag O' LEDs, etc.), but it's still been really useful. They don't have AVR microcontrollers, but they've got 555 timers and a couple kinds of op-amps, and they've got lots of different LEDs. And yeah, you'll pay a lot more than if you ordered them online, but there's no shipping cost and they're right there on your way home from work. (On the other hand, if you want a USB cable, they've only got $25 ones, not $2 ones.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks