Arduino for arduino's sake

Is it me, or do people insist on using the arduino CPU (328p) in things that should use something far more simple, like an ATTiny. I love the arduino.. But seriously you want to make a colour changing cube, cool, not a job for this micro controller.

The reason I would use a 328 instead of a attiny, is that it would plug directly into my other arduino boards, and I then easily could upload a new sketch to it.

I suspect a lot of Arduinos end up where a 555 would do.

I think ATTiny chips would become more popular, for users and 3rd party hardware suppliers, if the standard Arduino IDE would support those chips directly, rather then require 3rd parties to provide the needed modified core files to compile and upload to such chips. So far the IDE seems to only have standard support to chips that the Arduino firm uses in it's vaious board designs.

To be fair the Arduino IDE has been made easier to modify the IDE for other avr chip types.

Lefty

It doesn't matter to me. If I had to learn how to use an obsolete analog circuit just because it exists, I give up playing with electronics. I prefer doing everything with logic and math, instead of memorize the art of electronics. Good job Shannon (it's him right?)!

As far as I'm concerned the Tiny85 IS the new 555 :slight_smile:


Rob

people insist on using the arduino CPU (328p) in things that should use something far more simple

There is a very real question about whether anything needs to be simpler than a $5 chip. For anything short of commercial volumes of a consumer product: probably not. A lot of people seem to be finding the cost difference between a $30 Arduino and a $15 "barebones" equally irrelevant...

There is a very real question about whether anything needs to be simpler than a $5 chip

For me, the primary driver is physical size. An eight pin DIP is the perfect size for a handheld gadget.

Regarding costs... I've been getting very good results using the internal 1 / 8 MHz oscillator, running directly from batteries, and not bothering with a pull-up on RESET. For me, "bare bones" is just the processor making the cost difference $15 versus $2. For the three gadgets I've built that's $45 versus $6. Enough of a difference that I'm certainly going to continue using tiny processors! (when appropriate)