I've only been following this thread distantly, however, I have been playing with arduinos quite a bit of late.
If you wanted to incorporate one as the processor of choice in a new design, the cost is quite low, under $4.00us for the processor in quantity one. I've used one in a new design in the last week and it really simplified life. As to the capabilities, remember that pretty much any AVR chip can run the arduino code. The atmega128 has more oomph for about the same price for example. Additionally, if you don't like the language for the arduino, C takes about 5 minutes to get running. Bob On Dec 8, 2012, at 17:52, Jim Lux <jim...@earthlink.net> wrote: > On 12/8/12 9:30 AM, johncr...@aol.com wrote: >> >> >> Instead the discussion has centered on what microprocessor (of a hundred >> that would work) >> and how to eliminate "glue" logic and and a few analog parts to save >> money. This is silly - silicon is >> CHEAP. > > Silicon is cheap, but for one-off fabrication by a hobbyist that isn't always > the case. As was mentioned in a couple of the mails in the long discussion, > for a single person to build something like this requires a combination of > skills and materials. Someone may be fine at software, but doesn't want to > fabricate circuitry, or vice versa. > > So, there was discussion of what could you do that would literally be "plug > and play" with minimal hardware design and assembly required (so the playing > would be with software). > > > This isn't an unusual scenario.. The AMSAT folks have run into it vis a vis > ground stations. So have others (APRS). A colleague of mine (N5BF) comments > that what you really need is something where someone can "impulse buy" enough > to do something useful fairly quickly. The "kit idea": buying $100 worth of > parts and then having to spend 6 weeks assembling and testing means that lots > of people will have $100 parts bags sitting on a shelf, unused. You'd be > better off selling a $200 assembled and tested widget. Yes, you won't sell > quite as many, but a LOT more of them will be actually used than those bags > o'parts. > > > A particularly attractive model is where you have a hardware component that > is delivered pretty much ready to go, with basic software, and the "fooling > around" is with changes in the software or parameters. For the GPSDO world, > this might be experimenting with different filters and holdover strategies, > or maybe tuning it to work with your particular OCXO. > > This is why the Arduino is so popular. No or minimal soldering required, a > wealth of simple software that almost does what you need it to, be it > monitoring the temperature of your beer fermentation, turning on and off > sprinklers or whatever. > > Anything where the software is quite complex, that will inhibit > experimentation, unless there's a lot of documentation of the theory of > operation and software design, and the software has to be written to > facilitate modification. For the Arduino, the limited amount of storage > sort of self limits the complexity of applications. Once you move into the > PC world it gets a lot harder. And realistically, a lot of hobby written > software doesn't have a good architecture or underlying design. It sort of > just growed in place with successive modifications to add features, etc. And > it works, but it's not very easy to figure out how to modify it. > > > > > _______________________________________________ > time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com > To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts > and follow the instructions there. _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
