Guess you guys need to know what your competition is doing.
Netduino 2 $59.95
processor and memory
? STMicro 32-bit microcontroller
? Speed: 168MHz, Cortex-M4
? Code Storage: 384 KB
? RAM: 100+ KB
digital i/o features
? all 22 digital and analog pins: GPIO
? digital pins 0-1: UART 1 RX, TX
? digital pins 2-3: UART 2 RX, TX/PWM
? digital pins 5-6: PWM, PWM
? digital pins 7-8: UART 3 RX, TX
(also works as UART 2 RTS, CTS)
? digital pins 9-10: PWM, PWM
? digital pins 11-13: PWM/MOSI, MISO, SPCK
? digital pin SD/SC: SDA/SCL
(also works as UART 4 RX, TX)
networking
? ethernet: 10 mbps
? network stack: lwIP
storage
? micro sd (up to 2 GB) (soon to go much higher with a software upgrade)
? auto card detect
power
? input: 7.5 - 9.0 VDC or USB powered
? output: 5 VDC and 3.3 VDC regulated
? max current: 25 mA per pin
microcontroller max current: est. 125 mA total
? digital i/o are 3.3 V--but 5 V tolerant
"Why do you think that."
Well, so you guys can catch up and make a more decent product that Id want to buy.
Why would you buy a horse and buggy if you can get a car at the same price.
"The arduino is not about specifications. If you don't know that you don't know anything."
Your right about that 100 percent, its lacking in both hardware and software.
Just try to multitask 16-20 things the same time, without any native support for multitasking or threading on a 8 bit system.
Not here to fight, just think the arduino could be so much more then it is.
As of May 2011, more than 300,000 Arduino units were "in the wild".
According to Wolfram Alpha, arduino.cc site has 940,000 hits per day. Meanwhile netduino.com has 61,000 hits per day.
... its lacking in both hardware and software ...
I find it does what I want it to do quite nicely. I have PCs and Macs if I need to do multitasking etc.
I bought a Raspberry Pi. On paper, it looked much better. In practice, it was a pain to install the operating system, it was a pain to get it powered up even, and it didn't boot reliably. But its specs were better.
"How"
Well it uses Microsoft Visual Studio MF C# or Visual basic.
Microsoft Visual C# express is free, although its not open source but the netduino is.
You can run it using windows, or Linux and Mac using Mono another open source project.
So you can actually run it all open source using mono and windows.
As much as I hate Microcrap its easy to work with.
perkunas:
"Why do you think that."
Well, so you guys can catch up and make a more decent product that Id want to buy.
Why would you buy a horse and buggy if you can get a car at the same price.
"The arduino is not about specifications. If you don't know that you don't know anything."
Your right about that 100 percent, its lacking in both hardware and software.
Just try to multitask 16-20 things the same time, without any native support for multitasking or threading on a 8 bit system.
Not here to fight, just think the arduino could be so much more then it is
Well not to come off as a fanboy, but I would only ask you why the tremendous popularity and sales volume for the arduino? Why is the membership count for this forum so large?
The Arduino is simply the best overall entry point for new beginners to programming and learning to build their first electronics projects. As that beginner gains knowledge and experience that person will certainly be able to figure out in time if and when his projects require more speed and features then an 8 bit platform can provide.
It's not just about how much you can do with an arduino, it's how easy it is for a newcomer to get started doing something.
"I have PCs and Macs if I need to do multitasking etc."
Well that's just more added hardware, you need a PC hooked up to the arduino to do it, also it consumes more electricity space and yes
you now have to program your computer with something like VB anyway. Raspberry pi is nice but is slow very limited for a computer
"the tremendous popularity and sales volume for the arduino?"
Well the arduino has been around for some time and has built up a strong following, but that doesn't necessarily mean its the easiest to use for beginners or even the best system for them. I'm sure a PIC fanboy would disagree with you, but I do think if the product needs reform to stay current.
You cant just keep telling people a horse and buggy is good enough soon the cars will run you off the road.
perkunas:
"the tremendous popularity and sales volume for the arduino?"
Well the arduino has been around for some time and has built up a strong following, but that doesn't necessarily mean its the easiest to use for beginners or even the best system for them. I'm sure a PIC fanboy would disagree with you, but I do think if the product needs reform to stay current.
You cant just keep telling people a horse and buggy is good enough soon the cars will run you off the road.
Well nothing you said there has changed my mind about the arduino being the easiest for raw begineers. The only other platform I've come across that is as easy to get started (maybe even easier) is the Picaxe platform. But they being tokenized Basic, not true compiled code, have a large speed penalty compared to a arduino. Also their embedded firmware is not open sourced so you have to buy raw chips from the firm that they have installed the firmware.
So be specific and show us products that are easier for a raw beginner to programming and electronics to get started learning how to use micro-controllers in their projects. That is arduino's real strength and it's original aimed market.
You cant just keep telling people a horse and buggy is good enough soon the cars will run you off the road.
That's where the analogy is flawed IMHO.
We have tens of thousands of people who know how to use this "horse and buggy", as you call it. Thousands of libraries, many add-on products (shields, etc.). To do something as simple as switching a processor (as they did with the Leondardo) invalidates some of that.
I do think if the product needs reform to stay current ...
But what do you mean by that? For years I used Microsoft products and just when I had learned how to use (say) one of their database libraries, they "improved" it, throwing all that knowledge out the window.
To monitor water-tank levels, turn on lights at night, operate key-pad doors, feed the fish, water the garden, do many of the things that the Arduino does well these days, just doesn't need more power.
Unless you can dumb it down to a point where people can use it without reading a 1000+ page datasheet, there is no chance of it competing with arduino.
The arduino is going after one particular metric: ease of use. You don't need a 100MIPS mcu to blink an led once every second, or to turn on a relay when the user has pushed a button, etc.
Raw performance is not important (or it is not paramount) here.
"Unless you can dumb it down to a point where people can use it without reading a 1000+ page datasheet"
Not sure where these misconceptions come from, the beginners guide is the same size as the arduino one.
The real time debugging makes it super easy to find problems, also with most programers using Visual studio there's far more help out there then even arduino. Its true that they don't have all the community that's been built around the arduino but its growing. The software is actually much easier to use then the arduino you don't need to build complicated state machines or timers to get basic programs working or add computers because of no built in multitasking. The hardware is not the only problem I see, but also a programing environment that's old and almost obsolete.
Why would I want a Netduino when for about half the cost of the NetDuino, I can get a Raspberry PI that
is much more powerful and runs a real operating system?
"I can get a Raspberry PI", you sure can, but you wont be any better off, can you run C# or visual basic, well the answer is no.
You can run a version of C, actually, its been so hard to do things with that, they are trying to port arduino to it.
so good luck with that PI
perkunas:
Guess you guys need to know what your competition is doing.
Netduino 2 $59.95
...
runs C# and VB natively
I presume you've bought one? Just out of curiosity, have you found that it is easier to do what you want to do than the Arduino? Not just you hope it will, but it actually has?
You've made other posts about wanting multiple threads, so have you found that the Netduino has solved these problems? Easily and simply?
I always find threads like this surprising. Different products obviously serve different niches. If you want to write C# or VB on an embedded device, a Netduino is a natural. (I must concur with some others here who have stated they would rather chew off their own right arm, but I do appreciate that it is largely a matter of taste. My right arm tastes terrible, however.) If you want to run a full version of linux on a SoC device, the RPi takes on all comers in the embedded linux bang for buck metric. If you want to learn 8-bit embedded programming using something very similar to but not quite C/C++, the Arduino Uno is your answer. And so on.
Why the "my device is better than your device" mentality? You can make all (or none) of the various options available "your device" if you so choose.
If I ever feel the need to C# or VB, I'll get back to you. Mostly 'armless.
My initial reaction to the claim that it runs VB is, well you will need more power and more memory, just to stay in the same place. However I can't prove that. It's just a gut feeling.
History has shown that each release of Windows (for example) requires more memory, faster CPU, more disk space, than the previous version. But at the end of the day, you still have a PC with an operating system on it.
What you typically find is that once a platform has more memory, and a faster CPU, then the supplied operating system will gobble a lot of that up. So you aren't actually a huge amount better off.
