My Arduino Hardware Wishlist

[BrendaEM]

Hi,

I've been using Arduinos for a a few years.

I still want an Arduino mega for the breadboard, like the Micro but with more pins.

To me it's baffling that Official Arduino offerings seem to refuse to even try to compete as far as price. We want to support you--will you meet us part way?

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The Arm-Cortex chips are fast, but per-pin software controlled level shifting would be handy. I like the idea of 3.3 volt, but the problems extend beyond legacy devices to extended wires, in that 5 volts is likely a more reliable option with some hardware, such as longer wire runs, or where noise might be present.

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I am not fond for special functions only being supported on certain pins, such as PWM.

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As far as the editor is concerned. I still want to be able to drag the editing window all the way to the bottom of the IDE. For debugging code, or making instructional videos to help people, the space would be helpful.

I think that Bitstream Vera Mono is much more readable than the included fonts, especially, the serial monitor font, and yes, it is also free.

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There are still optimizations to be done to the compilers. I've cut out lines of code that cause baffling bytecode expansions.

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If an an Arduino chip will not run reliably at 75% variable memory capacity, it is indeed at 100%.

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While I like the structs, I don't care for the objects in the Arduino language. I feel that the established object methods should be migrated to standard C functions, as I've found problems with objects in Arduino, such as: I could not use the String object with the EEPROM object.

I wish the Arduino IDE had an option to clean it's temporary files on exit.

Thank you for reading this far,
BrendaEM

[Delta_G]

Hi,

I've been using Arduinos for a a few years.

I still want an Arduino mega for the breadboard, like the Micro but with more pins.

I saw a thread recently where someone laid out a design for that.  IIRC the damned thing was like 6 inches long. 

To me it's baffling that Official Arduino offerings seem to refuse to even try to compete as far as price. We want to support you--will you meet us part way?

Who cares. Buy the clones.  It's no money out of my pocket or the pockets of anyone here.

The Arm-Cortex chips are fast, but per-pin software controlled level shifting would be handy. I like the idea of 3.3 volt, but the problems extend beyond legacy devices to extended wires, in that 5 volts is likely a more reliable option with some hardware, such as longer wire runs, or where noise might be present.

Design and build it and the world is yours. 

I am not fond for special functions only being supported on certain pins, such as PWM.

Well the chip only has so many timers and they are hardware connected to certain pins.  I'm not sure what could be done about that.  Maybe you could use a different chip?  Either way, that's not an Arduino thing.  That's just the chip they picked. 

As far as the editor is concerned. I still want to be able to drag the editing window all the way to the bottom of the IDE. For debugging code, or making instructional videos to help people, the space would be helpful.

There are tons of other editors you can use.  The IDE happily supports editing the code in another program.  Might be nice to be able to turn the console at the bottom on and off.  I'll give you that one. 

I think that Bitstream Vera Mono is much more readable than the included fonts, especially, the serial monitor font, and yes, it is also free.

Well that's just like your opinion man ~Big L. 

I thought you could alter the fonts.  Maybe I'm thinking of something else. 

There are still optimizations to be done to the compilers. I've cut out lines of code that cause baffling bytecode expansions.

Go for it bro.  Do you think anyone here wrote that compiler?  It's open source.  Modify it all you want.

If an an Arduino chip will not run reliably at 75% variable memory capacity, it is indeed at 100%.

The chip will run reliably with 100% of the memory used.  But the message you get on compile only looks at globals.  It doesn't take into account how big the stack might get.  So they tell you if you're over 75% that you didn't leave any room for the stack.  That's not a property of the chip.  That's just programming in a microcontroller environment. 

While I like the structs, I don't care for the objects in the Arduino language. I feel that the established object methods should be migrated to standard C functions, as I've found problems with objects in Arduino, such as: I could not use the String object with the EEPROM object.

There is NO SUCH THING as the "Arduino Language".  Everything here is C++.  The reason the String class doesn't work with EEPROM is that nobody has written code in EEPROM.h to take a String object.  Just go write a function for it, although you'll probably get a lot of blowback if you publish it because using String objects on a microcontroller is pretty stupid. 

[pert]

I still want an Arduino mega for the breadboard, like the Micro but with more pins.

I was thinking about an ATmega2560 based breadboard friendly board with less pins but now that there is reasonably good support for the ATmega1284P it pretty much fills that need for me. Only half the flash but 128 kB is plenty for me and it has twice the SRAM to make up for it. You can get ATmega2560 breakout boards that have all the pins on a standard grid but they're not breadboard friendly. Forum member Crossroads sells one.

To me it's baffling that Official Arduino offerings seem to refuse to even try to compete as far as price. We want to support you--will you meet us part way?

I think Arduino's prices for some of the most popular boards are actually fairly reasonable: Uno, Leonardo, Pro Mini, Nano, 101, MKRZERO. It does bother me that they are charging $6.40 for shipping in the US when I know these boards could be shipped via USPS First Class Parcel for $2.60. I don't understand why most large companies don't use that service when it could offer the customer significant savings without much delay, if any, in the delivery time. Other boards such as Yun and even Mega do seem pretty expensive. It's hard on a beginner who typically can't spend much on their hobby and has a higher likelihood of letting the smoke out but they shouldn't be starting with those boards anyway. You need to understand that the cost of an Arduino product is not only for the hardware but the software as well. How many of those clone manufacturers have a team of programmers working full time to support the hardware they sell? Answer: none, because they let Arduino do that for them. If nobody buys Arduino products or donates then there's no money to pay the salaries for those developers.

I've found problems with objects in Arduino, such as: I could not use the String object with the EEPROM object.

Are you using EEPROM.get() and EEPROM.put()? I never use String but it seems to work fine for me:

Code: [Select]

#include <EEPROM.h>

void setup() {
  Serial.begin(9600);
  const int EEPROMaddress = 0;
  String foo = "hello world";
  EEPROM.put(EEPROMaddress, foo);
  String bar;
  EEPROM.get(EEPROMaddress, bar);
  Serial.print("bar: ");
  Serial.print(bar);
}

void loop() {}
If you think you found a bug with the EEPROM library then you should post a minimal, complete sketch that demonstrates the problem.

I wish the Arduino IDE had an option to clean it's temporary files on exit.

Which version of the Arduino IDE are you using? I think older IDE versions didn't remove the temporary files but recent versions do. If the IDE doesn't cleanly exit then it doesn't remove them.

[pert]

Feature request for being able to hide the console window:
https://github.com/arduino/Arduino/issues/6085

[BrendaEM]

I added something in the Github link.

[BrendaEM]

Yes, I was trying to use the String object with the EEPROM get/put.

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Well, if I buy only Arduino clones, who is going to pay for this very forum? But at 200%-400% more, loyalty becomes expensive.

~

Yes, it's possible for the user to change the fonts, but why not offer them a more legible font if one exists?  Additionally, the thin mono font for the terminal monitor is terrible to screen capture. That's a 50mb/s constant bitrate upload.

As for the editor front in the beginning of the video, that's bitstream mono.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lm8oprDhAnQ

--BrendaEM

[pert]

Yes, I was trying to use the String object with the EEPROM get/put.

Well, as I said it seems to work fine for me so if you're having an issue with it you'd need to provide more information so we can determine if it's caused by a bug in your code or an issue with the EEPROM library.

Well, if I buy only Arduino clones, who is going to pay for this very forum? But at 200%-400% more, loyalty becomes expensive.

You could donate whatever extra amount you would have been willing to pay for an Arduino board here:
https://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/Donate