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[on:]

2 thinks have got me wondering...

first, i gave an Induino board (an indian made arduino clone) to a kid in 9th grade and within weeks he's prototyping a lot of stuff... something is unleashed... this observation combined with the following statement that was posted in the arduino blog last year...

"Arduino is the kind of innovation eco-system that The White House could support today. Much like the President’s Fitness Challenge drove health and set goals for the nation, it’s easy to imagine an Arduino White House Challenge that would give young people the goals and rewards to drive big ideas into the economy."

has got me to ask 2 questions,

Has learning the Arduino changed things for you? What do you think would be the outcome if a lac people are exposed to arduino?

All Answers appreciated...

[Reply #1 on:]

I bought an STM 32 Discovery board (the latest and greatest) for half as much as an Arduino, it runs faster and it is 32 bit.  If only it had as much support but it doesn't.

I like Arduino but it has its limitations and many people exposed to it are just learning to cut and paste code.

[Reply #2 on:]

Has learning the Arduino changed things for you?

Yes,

What do you think would be the outcome if a lac people are exposed to arduino?

Think the point is that people should see that creating some "intelligence" into something is not too hard, that they can do it too.
It will inspire innovation (and a lot of copycats

[Reply #3 on:]

Has learning the Arduino changed things for you?

Yes. The low barrier to entry encouraged me to get back into microprocessors after a lengthy time doing other things.

And once you get comfortable with using them you are encouraged to do more fancy things.

The forum here is a great help, people are very supportive.

I think we need to encourage others to be "producers" rather than "consumers". There is a lot of satisfaction from knowing you made <something> (no matter what it is) rather than just buying someone else's <something>.

[Reply #4 on:]

If only it had as much support but it doesn't.

That's the difference between Arduino and the rest. It may change in time but for the moment this is the best forum of it's type and beginners need support.

______
Rob

[Reply #5 on:]

The ease of use and power of the Arduino empower ordinary people to create extraordinary things.  The Arduino makes a perfect introduction to both computer science and electronics.  Simple enough to be thoroughly understood and powerful enough to do almost anything you can think of.

I think Arduino in schools would be wildly successful.

[Reply #6 on:]

Arduino is not particular good in any specific aspect but "low entry barrier". IMHO the entry barrier issue is crucial. It dominates all the other issues.

[Reply #7 on:]

Arduino is not particular good in any specific aspect but "low entry barrier". IMHO the entry barrier issue is crucial. It dominates all the other issues.

I agree. And the 'low entry barrier' doesn't just apply to price and ease of use of the IDE. I found that the Arduino platform is the easiest to date by far for learning how to program in the C/C++ language. And the mastering of C/C++ is the biggest reward in my opinion that the Arduino platform offers to beginners. Once mastered, knowledge of C/C++ can be applied to nearly any microcontroller or PC and opens a big wide world of possibilities. I think that going with gcc C/C++ was the key decision that made the Arduino so successful and appealing to so many people of different experience and skill levels. If they had designed some kind of unique to Arduino 'beginners programming language' I don't think it would have been successful at all.

Lefty

[Reply #8 on:]

Arduino is not particular good in any specific aspect but "low entry barrier". IMHO the entry barrier issue is crucial. It dominates all the other issues.

I agree.

I disagree with "Arduino is not particular good in any specific aspect but "low entry barrier"". I agree with the rest.

As already mentioned; Arduino is also good in the service provided to the user. You can call this "low entry barrier" but for me having an Ethernet library from the shelf with help from many volunteers 24/7/365 in case of problems is no longer "low barrier"

I have been hearing already for decades that a "product" is more than the technical component. It is also the supply chain, the after sales and much more that make up the customer experience and as such the potential market share.
Due to lack of market knowledge of the microprocessor world I can't compare Arduino to others on a technical level. I see however that Arduino community is providing great services. (Thanks for that guys)

So the strengths of Arduino are to me (in no particular order)

• low entry barrier
• Great support of the community
• commonly available
• Extensible (with shields)

PS I'm stating the "Arduino community". I believe the "Arduino core team" scores below zero on services and communication. Think about 1.0 incompatibility, Due without info, not solving the pin issue, outdated documentation ....

[Reply #9 on:]

... I believe the "Arduino core team" scores below zero on services and communication. Think about 1.0 incompatibility, Due without info, not solving the pin issue, outdated documentation ....

regrettably you are correct
I just fail to see why they don't make more use of the massive amount of good input available here
or is that the problem?
information overlaod?

such a waste though...

[Reply #10 on:]

Well let's see:

Great support of the community --> not provided by Arduino but by the users / volunteers. The 24/7/365 is only true for simple questions and there is no SLA. Great support is usually expensive for a reason. What you get here is sufficient free support for basic questions.

commonly available --> so are naked AVR processors

So we come back to why the community exists in the first place --> low entry barrier.

[Reply #11 on:]

It's not the AVR.  It's not the language.  It's the people and spirit of tinkering.. especially the general "If you are willing to learn, then there's a thousand teachers on tap" community here.

I don't harp on it, but before I found Arduino, I was treated very poorly from the word go at a certain site focusing on AVR microcontrollers... The cretins and freaks on that site were downright hostile to newcomers.  Its the people here, and that is something we all should be proud of.

[Reply #12 on:]

Udo
you have overlooked

• Extensible (with shields)

And I do not agree on

What you get here is sufficient free support for basic questions.

It is not because the average question is basic you do not get "advanced support". To prove my point see this thread http://arduino.cc/forum/index.php/topic,86369.0.html

Best regards
Jan

[Reply #13 on:]

Are you saying you do, or do not, get advanced support here?

[Reply #14 on:]

With reference to the quoted thread, that looked like advanced support to me.