Advantage of Arduino

Other Hardware 3rd Party Boards
21

Arduino is a ready to use prototyping environment that has a good (large?) collection of proven libraries and a large user base operating in an open environment and obtainable at a very reasonable price. The programming IDE is readily adaptable to other devices in teh AVR family (I have added support for the ATtiny2313 and the ATMega1284P). It has a FREE set of tools that has a not-to-steep learning curve and a variety of examples to help get you up to speed. The Arduino comes in a form factor that is very easy to prototype and for which there are a variety of products available to help you to use it in ways that you decide. And most of these devices are opensourced and rather inexpensive. Other than the basic investment (I paid $30US) it has a very low cost of ownership. (unless you buy a handfull of chips, the supporting resonators/crystals, capacitors, resistors, reglators, Max232's, etc)

It is a nice, small, easy to use product that gives excellent results.

22

there isn't a good reference on how things are done behind the scenes.

http://arduino.cc/en/Hacking/BuildProcess ?
And of course there is 'read the source'...

23

Im one of those noobs who never got past downloading all the software, learning how to use it, learning c and how to compile and make it with all the parts and files and finally upload to blink an led
when I saw arduino I was writing my first code for an 8x8 matrix before I even had the arduino come in the mail! Now after the fact its been much easier to delve behind the scenes and see how all it works

24

westfw:

there isn't a good reference on how things are done behind the scenes.

http://arduino.cc/en/Hacking/BuildProcess ?

Uhm, er... uh... besides that one, of course... :sweat_smile: mmmm... humble pie....

Other than the basic investment (I paid $30US) it has a very low cost of ownership.

HA! Yep, sure it does. Just like crack. XD

(unless you buy a handfull of chips, the supporting resonators/crystals, capacitors, resistors, reglators, Max232's, etc)

There it is! Digi-key sends me Christmas cards now.

25

Digi-key sends me Christmas cards now

Oh, you let them off light! You should see the 3" high catalogs I get!

26

Dave Jones had a funny episode about that:

27

duinopad (OP) seems like a successful troll.

While Arduino (and I mean the software side of things) is great for various reasons (fairly simple, the right price, fairly powerful, hackable), it's still not everything to everyone. There are simpler to learn approaches and there are approaches that can take you much further. However, one could spend their entire MCU 'career' working in the Arduino world.

28

westfw:

there isn't a good reference on how things are done behind the scenes.

http://arduino.cc/en/Hacking/BuildProcess ?
And of course there is 'read the source'...

Occasionally I have found myself here:
http://www.nongnu.org/avr-libc/user-manual/index.html

29

Dear All,
Thank you so much for all for the reply
I am sorry for got long delay come back to this tropic. Please accept my apologizes any inconvenience case

But I did not see a relabel software simulator for Arduino that Newbie can practice before buy the hardware
Please advice
Thank in advance

30

duinopad:
Dear All
I am new for arduino
I would like to know, What is the advantage Arduino than AVR.if both use same chips

Seriously?

Arduino has voltage regulators, a USB connection, connectors for wires.... that's important if you don't know electronics or don't want to solder AVR chips.

31

duinopad:
But I did not see a relabel software simulator for Arduino that Newbie can practice before buy the hardware

Have you typed "Arduino simulator" into google? There must be at least a half dozen free Arduino simulators out there.

32

CrossRoads:

Digi-key sends me Christmas cards now

Oh, you let them off light! You should see the 3" high catalogs I get!

Oh, no...!

I hope I'm not on their list after they shipped those free samples to me.

33

Dear cyclegadget,

Thanks for reply

I downloaded Simulator for Arduino v0.98 and installed. Then I downloaded Arduino IDE and wrote the following program

void setup (){
pinMode (13, OUTPUT);
}
void loop(){
digitalWrite(13, HIGH);
delay(1000);
digitalWrite(13, LOW);
delay(1000);
}

Please advice how may I load the compiled file (HEX) to simulator. where the HEX file is generated

Please advice
Thanks in advance

34

Please advice how may I load the compiled file (HEX) to simulator.

I don't think you do. You load your sketch into the simulator's IDE, and run it from there.

35

Dear dxw00d ,
Thanks for reply
Could you please Let me know the different between sketch and HEX file
Thanks in advance

36

Dear All,
1.I wrote the program as attached picture and compiled well

2.sketch was generated as attached picture
3.Then I uploaded sketch file to Arduino simulator
4 The error message was generated as attached picture
Please advice

ar1.JPG
ar1.JPG538×599 35 KB

ar2.JPG

ar4.JPG
ar4.JPG1024×768 99.9 KB

37

Could you please Let me know the different between sketch and HEX file

A sketch is your source code.
The hex file is the compiled version of your sketch, ie translated from C/C++ to machine code for the AVR processor.

38

Can I have the solution for my last question

39

That's not an Arduino error message.

40

I think much of this discussion suffers from the lack of terms for certain items.
I've brought this up a few times in the past.
For example what does "Arduino" mean?
While accurate, people may get a strange look on their face when you say something like:
I used Arduino to program my Arduino with a program written in Arduino.

And that is the problem. There are no separate terms to refer
to the individual components such as the IDE, the tools, the board, the bootloader, the chip, the "language".
Because of this, people tend to throw around the term "Arduino" and yet it can mean different things to
different people.

To me, this makes things very difficult to have a discussion like the one occurring in this thread.

Much of the ease of use with respect to "Arduino" has very little to do with the Atmels AVR
or AVR architecture.
It is the GUI tools and libraries, documentation, examples etc, and most of that is in no
way tied to AVR.
In a sense it is the easy to use eco system around a pre-built board,
rather than any sort of specific chip or board that
makes "Arduino" a good fit for many people, including people with no embedded programming
experience.

Because the s/w eco system is open source and in no way tied to AVR, it has been ported and is now available
for use on non AVR based processors. ARM, and pic32 based boards now both have "Arduino" IDEs and "Arduino" core
libraries available for them.

So to me the Arduino vs non Arduino argument doesn't have anything to do with AVR but rather whether
or not to use the "Arduino" eco system or not. And the "Arduino" eco system includes, boards, shields, s/w libraries,
an IDE to build the code and documentation with support forums to tie it all together.

More advanced users can selectively pick and choose which of the various components of that eco system to use
and not have to use them all.

I do think that for advanced users with lots of embedded development experience,
there can be many issues and frustrations with the IDE and the build methodology, but then
the Arduino s/w is not really aimed at them.

I just wish there were some established terms to refer to the specific components within the eco system to
make discussions like this easier, as to me right now there are just too many things all called "Arduino".

--- bill