from the small-in-stature-but-big-of-heart dept.
Submitted via IRC for AnonymousLuser
Arduino's new Nano board family is more powerful and affordable
Arduino's new Nano board family is more powerful and affordable. The most basic one will set out back $9.90.
Arduino's Nano line will soon welcome four new products. They're all small boards like the classic one, making Nano a family of small boards meant for compact projects. All the new boards boast low energy consumption and processors more powerful than what the classic has. Even better, they're all pretty affordable: the most basic entry called Nano Every, which you can use for "everyday" projects and can replace the classic Nano, will even set you back as little as $9.90.
Arduino co-founder Massimo Banzi said in a statement:
"The new Nanos are for those millions of makers who love using the Arduino IDE for its simplicity and open source aspect, but just want a great value, small and powerful board they can trust for their compact projects. With prices from as low as $9.90 for the Nano Every, this family fills that gap in the Arduino range, providing makers with the Arduino quality they deserve for those everyday projects."
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 22 2019, @09:55AM (8 children)
I read the hardware specs but they're all Greek to me! What are its limits? I'm a software guy!
(Score: 3, Funny) by RamiK on Wednesday May 22 2019, @10:35AM
It's limited to hardware guys.
compiling...
(Score: 3, Funny) by VLM on Wednesday May 22 2019, @12:07PM (6 children)
Basically, instead of paying $6 on Amazon for a free delivery via Prime ESP8266 derivative for the past several years that has more memory and faster CPU and flash it with micropython or ulisp to program in a modern language, you can possibly pay $19 plus shipping for something with inferior specs shipping in the indeterminate future that you get to program in low level C.
But, kinda like the apple tax, there's people who love to pay more for less as long as its got a cool logo and the cool kids are talking about it (for now).
Admittedly extreme screwing around with obscure stuff requires literacy and thought, whereas the Arduino products are generally ridiculously well documented, such that people too dumb or unmotivated to actually use them for anything can trivially follow tutorials and such. You can tell a lot about the community around a device where the more obscure stuff has social media comments about how some dude is trying to port Haskell to his 8266 to run a homegrown SCADA system for his tabletop fusion reactor, in comparison social media comments on Arduino products is all like "I not know how to use mouse; tell me the needful" "Computer screen is black when power cable is removed which is racist smash the patriarchy now drumpf!" tier stuff.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by epitaxial on Wednesday May 22 2019, @12:37PM (3 children)
Why would I buy a microcontroller with embedded wifi if I didn't need it? Chances are if you need to talk with a device you will find Arduino libraries already written. Cut it with the superiority complex, you're not as bright as you think.
(Score: 2, Troll) by VLM on Wednesday May 22 2019, @01:58PM (2 children)
Because it was one example of something easier to program with more features and better specs that's cheaper. Its hardly an isolated situation.
Fine, you want better specs and cheaper but without wifi (its not like you HAVE to use it, just because its onboard, ya know) with a focus on low power, although admittedly not much easier to use, there's the venerable MSP430 series at about half the price actually shipping for many years as opposed to futuristic vaporware and draws a tenth to a hundredth the electrical power, for example.
There's not much the arduino wins at. I admit there's a large ecosystem of plug -n- play hardware shields, I guess, plus or minus 3.3V vs 5V incompatibilities, so sometimes the project IO reqs might dictate the hardware daughterboard which dictates an arduino pinout but again you can buy anything from PIC32 to ARM with arduino compatible pinouts such that you can use modern hardware and modern dev environments even if stuck with arduino form factor for daughterboard/shield reasons.
Its pretty bad when some of the only arguments for a tool are "it builds character, stamina, and grit, to use the wrong tool for the job" or "muh community"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 23 2019, @01:47AM (1 child)
Your so-called "muh community" is worth so much more than the difference in price between microcontroller A and microcontroller B.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday May 23 2019, @12:00PM
Yeah, as the old saying goes, "it takes a village to blink an LED" ...
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 22 2019, @01:26PM (1 child)
Or perhaps you want something that has pretty good resilience to power fluctuations, far lower power usage while operating and better (thriftier) sleep modes, more precise realtime operation, etc etc so you just get an AVR. Why not do your dev with an Arduino? Large education-focused community and tons of tooling, easily adaptable if needs be. Well designed and tough little boards.
You pick what works. If you want a cheap limited MCU with good connectivity features, an ESP is fine. If you just want some sloppy/slow GPIO or are restricted to standard buses, need lots of compute and don't care about your power budget at all, you might get something in ARM flavour.
Or you can just rant about something you don't understand on the internet while trying to masturbate over how clever you are. Whatever makes you happy.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday May 22 2019, @02:22PM
I'm pretty sure there's an Arduino shield for that with a vibrant and inclusive developer community.
The brutal fact of engineering is most things are ideal for something under some obscure conditions, although really bad products are ideal for nothing at all, when even bad "fits" are still better across the board (get the pun, board, LOL?)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 22 2019, @10:05AM (2 children)
Once upon a time, I have built a complete GSM phone from an Arduino and some cheap baseband shield. Been mocked by whole family and friends badly for a bulky contraption. I have no friends since.
(Score: 3, Funny) by RamiK on Wednesday May 22 2019, @10:39AM
Get a 3D printer and design an apple shaped clamshell to hold it all together and put a $200 sticker on it. They'll call you a genius in no time.
compiling...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 22 2019, @10:50AM
I'm sorry to hear that. Too many people are assholes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 22 2019, @10:20AM (13 children)
Raspberry Pi Zero is €10. 512MB RAM and WiFi. No need WiFi? There is a €5 version. And I have full Linux with video support.
Why would I want to have something that is more expensive with a lot less features? I could just have a PIC controller for €3 and it has comparable specs or better than the Arduino....
Raspberry Pi killed the Arduino as a hobby market.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 22 2019, @10:57AM (4 children)
Shut your Pi-hole. Arduino etc. are definately not dead. Why would i want some complex OS with binary blobs to ruin the simple task (could even be battery operated) that i can easily do on a microcontroller?
The PIC you speak off, getting just the chip doesn't get you far. Arduino (and other dev boards) is more than the chip.
And thanks to Broadcomm, the closed spec chip that you have in Pi is not that easy to use as a realtime controller.
Pis are basically good for one thing, making a underpowered media center.
(Score: 0, Troll) by VLM on Wednesday May 22 2019, @01:47PM (2 children)
What is it, then?
Note that I know a lot about what we're discussing, so I'm not asking academically or honestly. I'm just kinda amused at the idea of how you're gonna try to dig out of that particular hole.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 22 2019, @02:54PM (1 child)
I don't understand what exactly is your major malfunction here. I was talking about some PIC microcontroller vs and arduino board as the OP did. Just because you can buy a PIC chip with more features for $3 doesn't mean it's better than Arduino board that costs $10. The Arduino board also has crystal and other support components, that the plain PIC microcontroller does not. It's going to be a lot more work to get that plain PIC running.
(Score: 1) by Acabatag on Thursday May 23 2019, @12:04AM
For many applications where timing is not critical, there are built in trimmed/trimmable RC clocks inside the chip package. The PIC10F2xx family, for instance, comes in a six pin package. You have to spend two pins for power and ground, but the other four pins are versatile I/O lines.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 22 2019, @08:57PM
Hey OP, i'm sorry if my post seems a bit harsh. It was a joke, the pi-hole thing. But please don't claim that everything can be solved by some RPi. There are many different situations where different kinds of boards are the most optimal. There is no one solution to every problem.
Yes, personally i view RPi as pretty crappy thing, mostly because of Broadcom. I think there are better boards out there, RPi just happens to have the most following and instructions, which is unfortunate. Things could be better.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 22 2019, @11:01AM (4 children)
Raspberry Pi is electrically and thermally the worst design since the ZX Spectrum, a total design fail in many aspects. It's the cult what keeps it so popular.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Freeman on Wednesday May 22 2019, @03:12PM (2 children)
No, it's the fact that it's a cheap board with decent features and a large following of people who support it. As far as learning computers / programming / etc. goes, you'd do much worse than introducing a kid to a RaspberryPi. In fact, one might say introducing a kid to a RaspberryPi would be very beneficial to them as opposed to introducing them to Windows/Apple/Android.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 22 2019, @09:04PM (1 child)
Raspberry pi's are too closed.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Acabatag on Thursday May 23 2019, @12:13AM
At the hardware level they are too closed. It's not the same experience as a Commodore 64 where they used common off-the-shelf 8 bit peripheral chips for most of the design. But the Pi is an introductory level system. Kids with the gumption to go further will get involved with low cost PICs and AVR chips (not necessarily on an over-priced Arduino brand PC Board).
(Score: 2) by Acabatag on Thursday May 23 2019, @12:06AM
The Raspberry Pi is a pedagogical project. It's intent is for there to be cheap single boards for school children to play around with and learn from. The malingering adult tech bros who hang around the community aren't the target audience at all.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by epitaxial on Wednesday May 22 2019, @12:02PM (2 children)
You failed engineering 101. If you need an entire embedded Linux distribution just to toggle some IO pins you're doing something very wrong. How long is the Pi zero boot process? Arduino is a few milliseconds tops. Now let's talk power draw...
(Score: 3, Touché) by VLM on Wednesday May 22 2019, @02:01PM (1 child)
We live in a world where we've trained people to accept "smart TVs" with boot times longer than old vacuum tube warm up times, so I'm not saying its the right thing, but it is what it is...
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday May 22 2019, @05:25PM
Something's gotta boot if you want Netflix on your TV.... Does performing that boot sequence on your ps4 instead of your TV really change anything?
(Score: 5, Informative) by RamiK on Wednesday May 22 2019, @11:11AM (2 children)
( https://www.techrepublic.com/article/arduino-reveals-new-powerful-low-cost-nano-boards-for-building-homemade-hardware-and-gadgets/ [techrepublic.com] )
compiling...
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 22 2019, @12:05PM (1 child)
No words about consumption anywhere. When battery-operated, that could be a killer. On one particular project, I even crushed the power-on led on the board and reduced the idle current by a whooping 3mAmps, the sucker.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 22 2019, @08:39PM
If you want low power, battery powered, you don't want arduino anyway. You want to design your own.
https://www.microchip.com/design-centers/lowpower [microchip.com]
What other thing runs at this type of power level? A 2032 3V 150mAh battery could then run such a sucker at 1MHz for 7 months. And if your duty cycle is only 5% and rest you can sleep, then that extends the duty cycle of this button battery to 10 years.