Is the Arduino in trouble

avenue33:

h4t:
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.

I fully agree with you: Arduino is a whole concept, and a great one.

h4t:
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.

I wasn't looking for more I/Os but for more power. So I bet 25€ on the chipKIT UNO32, knowing what could be the risks with a new platform and being ready to face them.

Actually, I've been delighted by the support and the community. Diligent and Microchip engineers participate on the forum actively.

Another great point is the strong commitment to the Arduino IDE, thank to close ties among developers.

h4t:
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.

Please have a look at my chipKIT UNO32 Board review and the compatibility issues and fixes.

Am I the only one that thinks "OVERKILL" to use a 32 bit processor for some (actually most) of the stuff we see done with Arduino?
Arduino's concept is to introduce normal people to electronics. And at that it is a huge success. Proof of which is the fact that a lot of the manufacturers started with Arduino clones, as were referred to here previously.

bubulindo:
Am I the only one that thinks "OVERKILL" to use a 32 bit processor for some (actually most) of the stuff we see done with Arduino?

So what if it is? The price of the chipkit UNO32 board looks comparable to the Arduino Uno board, and it offers more I/O pins and RAM (both of which people using Arduino sometimes run out of). So it makes sense for me to standardize on it in place of Arduino if/when other things (IDE, libraries, community-based support etc.) are as good as Arduino or better.

A modern PC is overkill for doing most of the things I use it for that I did on an 8-bit microcomputer 30 years ago, but that doesn't mean I should stop using a PC for those things. A 20A 100V mosfet is overkill for switching 1A at 12V, but if the 20A mosfet is what I have in the drawer, that's the one I'll use in a 1-off project.

Maybe it's time Arduino migrated to a 32-bit AVR chip?

bubulindo:
Am I the only one that thinks "OVERKILL" to use a 32 bit processor for some (actually most) of the stuff we see done with Arduino?

There are applications for which 32 bit is overkill, and there are also applications that limited by 8 bit.

With 32 bit embedded chips dropping to ever low price points (ARM, PIC32...) Arduino needs a path to 32 bits without breaking the existing 8 bit support. 8 bit is great for getting started with Blink and is more than enough for many applications. As Arduino makes embedded processing more accessible thanks to Arduino philosophy, new previously unimagined apps will show up. Some will be limited by 8 bit capabilities. The past can be used to predict the future here.
Should be interesting to watch, the market will progress.

Hi!

bubulindo on Today at 10:44:42 AM:
Am I the only one that thinks "OVERKILL" to use a 32 bit processor for some (actually most) of the stuff we see done with Arduino?

My initial micro-controller features a 200 MHz 32-bit ARM 9 processor and 8 MB RAM, 2 MB flash but it's a walled system.

I had four main goals with the 8-bit Arduino:

  • go inside of a micro-controller because the TX-C is a very nice box but rather closed black box,
  • understand the embedded programming better,
  • get familiar with I2C protocol and experiment with I2C sensors and actuators,
  • try and communicate with TX-C through opto-couplers, digital potentiometer and finally I2C.

I've learnt a couple of valuable things playing with the 8-bit Arduino:

  • how to deal with limited memory—write compact code
  • how to deal with limited power—write light code

I've really enjoyed how easy the Arduino is, so I went for something more powerful with the 32-bit chipKIT UNO32.

Maybe it's time Arduino migrated to a 32-bit AVR chip?

I would be a little concerned if the resulting Arduino IDE starts supporting many processors with wildly different capabilities (32 bit Vs 8, etc) that things could get quite complex when it comes to things like burning bootloaders, running 3rd party contributed library code, lack of or incompatible chip hardware features like eeprom vs no eeprom, 12 bit A/D vs 10 bit A/D. I'm just not sure how far you can go 'abstracting' things so differences are transparent to the end user for their sketch code? We already have to deal with different pin numbers used for I2C by 328 Vs 1280/2560 based boards, think what other complications might show up with ARM chips Vs ATmega chips?

Part of the success of the Arduino platform is it has a pretty good track record of 'it just works' and if too much is asked of the underlining libraries and core arduino functions, it might morf into being too complex an IDE to be approachable by raw beginners, you know the artists. :wink:

That being said, 32 bit @ 100+ Mhz support would sure be nice to add to the old toolbox.

Lefty

Glad to spike the conversation a bit more...

Yes, I wouldn't mind playing with a 32 bit microcontroller... but like retrolefty said, things would be complex and maybe not that great mixing two very different microcontroller families under the same roof. That being said, it doesn't mean that both can't coexist... however, the objective of the Arduino was (still is?) to give a nice stepping stone for common people (or artists) to begin playing with electronics. And eventually, with everything such chip can do, things will morf into something way too advanced for the beginner to start without feeling even worse than most do (like we see in the forums) when starting with Arduino.

I get it, that everyone is kinda milking the Arduino concept to sell microprocessors, but it doesn't have to be that way. It's pretty obvious where the strong points of the Arduino are, and it's weaknesses too. So why not start fresh with the good things and fixing the not so good things in Arduino (the pin spacing, not populating the output pins so people can choose between top shield or breakout to breadboard)?
But I guess that is too hard.

bubulindo:
Glad to spike the conversation a bit more...

Yes, I wouldn't mind playing with a 32 bit microcontroller... but like retrolefty said, things would be complex and maybe not that great mixing two very different microcontroller families under the same roof. That being said, it doesn't mean that both can't coexist... however, the objective of the Arduino was (still is?) to give a nice stepping stone for common people (or artists) to begin playing with electronics. And eventually, with everything such chip can do, things will morf into something way too advanced for the beginner to start without feeling even worse than most do (like we see in the forums) when starting with Arduino.

I get it, that everyone is kinda milking the Arduino concept to sell microprocessors, but it doesn't have to be that way. It's pretty obvious where the strong points of the Arduino are, and it's weaknesses too. So why not start fresh with the good things and fixing the not so good things in Arduino (the pin spacing, not populating the output pins so people can choose between top shield or breakout to breadboard)?
But I guess that is too hard.

AFAIK there is nothing stopping you from doing it. Release a board with the changes you want, pin spacing, unpopulated output pins etc. while retaining the ability to use the Arduino IDE.
I don't understand why you think the purpose of Arduino is to sell microprocessors. Again, Atmel has done little to directly aid the Arduino community.

JoeO:

bubulindo:
Glad to spike the conversation a bit more...

Yes, I wouldn't mind playing with a 32 bit microcontroller... but like retrolefty said, things would be complex and maybe not that great mixing two very different microcontroller families under the same roof. That being said, it doesn't mean that both can't coexist... however, the objective of the Arduino was (still is?) to give a nice stepping stone for common people (or artists) to begin playing with electronics. And eventually, with everything such chip can do, things will morf into something way too advanced for the beginner to start without feeling even worse than most do (like we see in the forums) when starting with Arduino.

I get it, that everyone is kinda milking the Arduino concept to sell microprocessors, but it doesn't have to be that way. It's pretty obvious where the strong points of the Arduino are, and it's weaknesses too. So why not start fresh with the good things and fixing the not so good things in Arduino (the pin spacing, not populating the output pins so people can choose between top shield or breakout to breadboard)?
But I guess that is too hard.

AFAIK there is nothing stopping you from doing it. Release a board with the changes you want, pin spacing, unpopulated output pins etc. while retaining the ability to use the Arduino IDE.
I don't understand why you think the purpose of Arduino is to sell microprocessors. Again, Atmel has done little to directly aid the Arduino community.

ATMEL is not directly related with Arduino... however, other brands are supporting Arduino clones with their chips. So it's not ATMEL that is milking the Arduino... it's all the others using the same format.

bubulindo:
Arduino's concept is to introduce normal people to electronics.

I think the word concept might be a bit wrong and objective should have been used there.

Again, Atmel has done little to directly aid the Arduino community

Are you certain?

Well I'm not. So I went to Atmel's main site and performed a advance search for whole site, results:

Search Results "Arduino" resulted in the following:

Atmel has a full-time employee with the title "Open Source Community Manager". We would not have a GCC AVR compiler for Windows if it wasn't for him. I guess he needs to toot his horn a bit more.

Is it possible he has posted on this topic? I have no idea who it might be but, I wonder if there are clues in this thread.

Mark

Atmel has a full-time employee with the title "Open Source Community Manager".

Is it possible he has posted on this topic? I have no idea who it might be but, I wonder if there are clues in this thread.

The name is "Eric Weddington", aka "ew" on AVRFreaks. He has shown up on the developer email list, but I don't know if I've seen him on the forums at all, unless he's "hiding."

AVR-GCC != Arduino ...

AVR-GCC != Arduino

Yes, but "no avr-gcc == no Arduino"
There's a lot to "avr-gcc", including the gcc core (not cpu dependent at all), the assorted "binutils" (also not cpu dependent), the standard and specific C libraries (avr-libc), plus the mere packaging (giving a windows gcc binary to a windows users is pretty useless without a unix-like shell environment, so "WINAVR" ends up including a bunch of standard unix utilities (rebuilt for windows) as well.

My opinion is: More options are always better and having more "controller" chip options adds to the longevity options of the Arduino open source project as a whole. The "community" have already made significant strides since the original Atmega8 and I personally would expect this to continue to change as newer more capable and cost effective controllers are available.

While WINAVR is also a very good example an open source project success story, I feel compelled to say that Atmel gives the appearance that they wish to avoid "taking sides" or "taking a stand" regarding any open source projects related to AVR's. They clearly have relationships with compiler vendors, such as IAR and I believe that it is quite sensible for them to embrace the commercial ventures and essentially do little more than "nod" towards the open source. This has the effect of leaving Arduino and similar projects "on their own", but that also means "freedom".

As for the Arduino form factor and other hardware solutions that are copying it? Well, to me it is rather silly. I personally prefer the solder-less breadboard option "boarduino" anyway. The only reason examples like Chipino or Maple exist is to make their product more palatable (with no additional expense) due to the huge amount of "shields" available thanks to Arduino. I personally have little respect for these options as a result but it is clear that what the hobbyist/teaching environment needed badly was some form of "standards".

westfw:

AVR-GCC != Arduino

Yes, but "no avr-gcc == no Arduino"
There's a lot to "avr-gcc", including the gcc core (not cpu dependent at all), the assorted "binutils" (also not cpu dependent), the standard and specific C libraries (avr-libc), plus the mere packaging (giving a windows gcc binary to a windows users is pretty useless without a unix-like shell environment, so "WINAVR" ends up including a bunch of standard unix utilities (rebuilt for windows) as well.

True... but Arduino is a bit more than the compiler. That's what I was trying to point out.
I came upon this article (Editorial: Our friend Microchip and open source – Dangerous Prototypes) about the chipKit. Interesting?

There is no doubt that there would be no Arduino platform without the multiple underlining open source projects they used to build on top of, including avr-gcc, avrdude, Processing, Wiring, etc.

The original Arduino effort took not so much a lot of new coding (maybe the bootloader and a few core libraries and files?), but rather the effort needed to integrate, configure, and modify the avalible existing open source projects and of course the effort to make it work on all three major PC platforms (Windows, Linux, Mac).

The original Arduino hardware brought nothing really new to the consumer (maybe the shield concept, but that's hardly a breakthrough), but the selection and integration of all the underlining open source software components, to create a new open sourced project, was and continues to be fundamental to it's acceptance and success.

Lefty

Yup. It's not so much about the actual hardware itself... it's about the overall experience.