Is the Arduino in trouble

451799 Posts in 62639 Topics by 46281 Members.

I would stick to arduino, and I'm sure most of the 46281 forum members will too. I can't see any reason why another clone will stop arduino. It could have the opposite effect, and bring more people to try arduino, after being introduced to microcontrollers through other development boards.

Onions.

Onions:

451799 Posts in 62639 Topics by 46281 Members.

I would stick to arduino, and I'm sure most of the 46281 forum members will too. I can't see any reason why another clone will stop arduino. It could have the opposite effect, and bring more people to try arduino, after being introduced to microcontrollers through other development boards.

Onions.

If half of the first page of the members on this forum pack up and leave for something newer, I will have a shaken belief on arduino. But until then I have no fear that another clone will take over arduino. I think the arduino "asset" resides more on its community than any hard/soft/firm/not-so-firm/ware advantages and price differences.

I fell for it and bought the MAX32. To me it is just another development board. The arduino "form factor" means very little to me. Both boards have the same advantage that the arduino has. You can program using arduino libraries, or you can program using native code for the chip. They both have their strengths, and areas of use. It doesn't mean I will go out and sell all my Arduinos and AVR chips. I will continue integrating various AVR mcus im the projects that they are right for. Maybe someday I will integrate a PIC32MX chip in a project, if that is what the project demands. More choices for the consumer are good. The fact that they want to use the arduino libraries can only mean the arduino team is doing a great job!

J.C.

liudr:

Onions:

451799 Posts in 62639 Topics by 46281 Members.

I would stick to arduino, and I'm sure most of the 46281 forum members will too. I can't see any reason why another clone will stop arduino. It could have the opposite effect, and bring more people to try arduino, after being introduced to microcontrollers through other development boards.

Onions.

If half of the first page of the members on this forum pack up and leave for something newer, I will have a shaken belief on arduino. But until then I have no fear that another clone will take over arduino. I think the arduino "asset" resides more on its community than any hard/soft/firm/not-so-firm/ware advantages and price differences.

I for one am coming from a parallax bs2sx, I really prefer the resources and open source nature of the arduino.

You first have to understand that the term "Arduino" is kind of ambiguous for beginners, as it encompasses more technology than you might expect. "Arduino" can refer to the official board, the firmware for AVR ATMega chips, the programming language or the IDE you type that language into. It might be more accurate to say that Arduino actually refers to a big idea, of getting microcontroller technology into the hands of more people.

By that notion, the previous posters are completely correct: the more clones there are, the stronger Arduino is! Because the idea is carried forward. Personally, I have never bought an 'official' Arduino board, I've always used clones or made my own variants, and I don't think I'm supporting the Arduino initiative any less than other people.

I am pretty excited that Digilent has ported over some basic Arduino tech (shields and software ideas), but I'm sure its going to suffer from the same thing that plagued the microcontroller before the Arduino came along: crappy support, and zero community. PICs and AVRs have been around for a long, long time, but their users don't really share their work very often or form any coherent support network (AVRFreaks is probably the only exception I can think of). What makes Arduino so awesome is that anyone can come to these forums (or a handful of others around the internet) and get a discussion going. There's tons of energy and momentum going on with the Arduino community as a whole, which is part of what motivates hackers like me. I do hope the chipKIT gains some support and its users start showing off (and sharing) their projects, because a 32-bit processor is pretty darn cool. But since I don't want to figure out everything there is to know about those processors myself, I'm not going to be buying one just yet.

I do worry a little about the so called arduino "form factor compatablity" with the 32 bit boards. As any 32 bit board is bound to be a 3.3vdc board and most arduino boards and existing shields are 5vdc is there room for electrical damage here?

Lefty

PIC32 apparently has 5V-tolerant/compatible IO, except for the analog pins, which have added protection.

Just which shields ARE compatible with a 3.3V cpu, anyway, and how do you tell them to be so (rather than carefully level-converting the digital pins back up to 5V, for example.) I suppose it would be easy if you just put 3.3V on the "5V" power pin and let things run, but pic32 (for example) carefully puts a real 5V there (which is one of the compatibility issues I was referring to.)

retrolefty:

oldPGMguy:
I see Mircochip has come out with the chipKIT32....its compatiable with arduino shields and has more I/O pins then the ONO,,,should I be worried that this could be the end of the Arduino???????

There is a lot more to the Arduino then just the hardware. I'm certainly not concerned, are you?

Lefty

Indeed, Arduino can be in trouble if:

    • there are supply problems and prices are increasing (or prices can't be lowered); - prices are already high
    • all the projects which made Arduino famous will be fully adapted (or their authors will migrate) to Chipkit and other compatible boards - is happening already

Frustrations in making transition (software and hardware problems) to Arduino clones can strengthen the Arduino position. But, something must be done for sure. You can't just sit on your leader chair without progress. Still, 5Vcc is a barrier to many hobbyists and Chipkit example in adapting a 3.3V chip to be a 5V board is to be followed.

Also, "the model" Microchip is making in quietly supporting the Chipkit boards with specialized engineers is definitely to be followed. I hope Atmel is reading (or someone pointing them to) this.

Vasi

  • there are supply problems and prices are increasing (or prices can't be lowered); - prices are already high
  • all the projects which made Arduino famous will be fully adapted (or their authors will migrate) to Chipkit and other compatible boards - is happening already

These two statements are utter rubbish and show you don't know what you are talking about.

  1. I'm relating to realities in my zone (is all what it matters).
  2. For RepRap is there a project started for Chipkit boards. And expect more where speed is needed.

My post suggest progress to Arduino platforms (and that you can't ignore "the signs"). Google chose Arduino platform for their ADK assuring Arduino existance for a long time from now on but also here are more powerful (and cheaper?) platforms for that.

But I'm sure Arduino developers will take into account all of these.

Vasi

Both AVR and PIC have been around for quite some time. The Arduino is already here and there is a clone board with a PIC microcontroller. As far as I see it, Arduino != AVR/ATMEL. And if someone ported the Arduino code for a board with a PIC in it, would it really make a big difference for whoever is starting with this?

Plus, let's not forget that I'm yet to see a nice and free C compiler that works with PIC. It's not chance that Arduino is based on AVR... and not any other microcontroller.

Plus, the main goal of Arduino is to bring people into electronics. Cut the small pesky details from them and get them interested so they search for information themselves after breaking the entry barrier that is normally quite high in electronics. And for that, the processor you have on the board isn't really a problem. Whatever processor, as long as you use the same language, works for this purpose. And that, is not something chipKit can take away from Arduino.

Also, do remember that this is a "war" like Macs x PCs, Canon x Nikon, Android x iOS...

When radio came all the papers were in panic,
When TV came radio and papers paniced,
When internet came TV radio and papers paniced,
but they still all exist in their own niches.
Panic never helped, adapting to new situation does.

From a technical point of view Arduino is not the best, the fastest etc (some would even say obsolete). But it scores very very high on the fun top-10, and many people building sketches with only 2K of RAM do that because it is fun. Adding more memory is less fun, more MHz is less fun, etc That fun-factor is difficult to copy. Accomplish something with minimal means is often more rewarding for the ego.

But sometimes you need a bigger board, just because the Arduino can't do it, the customer wants to, etc. I think this Chipkitz board looks quite nice, but so does the PANDA II see - www. tinyclr.com -

These two statements are utter rubbish and show you don't know what you are talking about

For goodness sake, Mike, come down off the fence, stop beating about the bush and say what you really mean.
:smiley:

Seems to me some of those otherd designs would be overkill for many projects.
A lot of things just need a little smarts and an external component or two.
Or may more direct hardware controlled IO and little more program memory.
So if one needs low cost and not a lot of program space, use a 168. Need more memory? Put in a 328.
Need more IO? Go to a 324. More memory? 644, 1284.
Even more IO? Time to move up to surface mount 1280, and 2560 for more memory.

But you can do a lot of things with just the 328 based card (or a standalone build) and a few external components.

So, where is the rubbish?

This for a start:-

all the projects which made Arduino famous will be fully adapted (or their authors will migrate) to Chipkit and other compatible boards - is happening already

Do you seriously expect ALL existing arduino projects to be ported over? For what advantage at what effort, you clearly don't have much experience of life and how it works.

  1. I'm relating to realities in my zone (is all what it matters)

I assume that mangled English means you only care about what is happening in your area, so why do you think it applies to all other areas. If one of your areas of interest is the RepRap, just because some one has started a project to use a new processor do you think everyone is going to abandon the old one? Only if it offers a significant advantage.

And expect more where speed is needed.

The speed limitations on a RepRap system is not down to the processor, it is down to the mechanics and the extrusion system. Again this leads me to thing you don't know what you are saying.

prices are already high

Come off it do you seriously think that? If you do you are a complete idiot with no idea of the cost of anything. Have you ever put a project into mass production? It is not just about adding up the component prices you know.

My post suggest progress to Arduino platforms (and that you can't ignore "the signs").

Gosh you are right, panic panic abandon ship. (this is called irony)

@AWOL - off the fence enough? :wink:

bubulindo:
I'm yet to see a nice and free C compiler that works with PIC. It's not chance that Arduino is based on AVR...

This is at the heart of the Arduino's success. Until somebody comes up with PIC-GCC, PIC microcontrollers will never compete for the hearts and minds of hobbyists. And if PIC-GCC does arrive, it won't compete with AVR-Arduino, it will just be added to it. There will be PIC-based Arduino boards as well as AVR-based ones, and everybody will be happy.

tim7:

bubulindo:
I'm yet to see a nice and free C compiler that works with PIC. It's not chance that Arduino is based on AVR...

This is at the heart of the Arduino's success. Until somebody comes up with PIC-GCC, PIC microcontrollers will never compete for the hearts and minds of hobbyists. And if PIC-GCC does arrive, it won't compete with AVR-Arduino, it will just be added to it. There will be PIC-based Arduino boards as well as AVR-based ones, and everybody will be happy.

Well - that's basically happened with the ChipKIT (I think that's right?) - based on the PIC32 line, with a gcc-based compiler for it. Only time will tell whether people love or hate it. I personally think it will just be another option, much like the more advanced Arduinos out there (Sanguino 644, Mega1280, Mega2560, etc). We've already seen some ARM-based "Arduino-like" systems out there; there are options a-plenty, if you need the speed, memory, or I/O capabilities - and still want to use open-source development tools.

:slight_smile:

Well no matter what evolution the hobby microcontroller market takes, I think the Arduino platform will survive for a long long time to come, if for no other reason then I don't think any new 32 bit controller offerings will be avalible in hobby friendly DIP packages. For homebrew/standalone projects it's hard to pass up the advantages of a DIP chip for some users, like me. :smiley:

Lefty

Well - that's basically happened with the ChipKIT (I think that's right?) - based on the PIC32 line, with a gcc-based compiler for it.

Some quick Google shows the PIC32-gcc compiler from Microchip has a code size limitation of 64K? You have to pay $800+ to remove limitiations. If I got that right Arduino is under no threat. There will be the inevitable market push to 32 bit as a compatible option, the toolchain is the key. Arduino figured that out at the start.

Whoever commits to the Arduino free tools mindset with compatibility will claim the emerging market (imho). I hope it is Atmel, but will remain open to options from vendors that get it.

MGeo:

Some quick Google shows the PIC32-gcc compiler from Microchip has a code size limitation of 64K?

I haven't looked at the PIC32 chips to see their memory sizes, but 64K sounds quite nice. I remember in other compilers like the Keil51 or the CodeVisionAVR had 1 or 2 k program limitation.

From what I see there's still a few chips with 64 or less K to use. But it's like 10% of the entire family.