
New board in the Arduino Family: Esplora - iamwil
http://arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoardEsplora
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thechut
It's always good to see new stuff from Arduino. Especially when I'm not
expecting it. This seems to be very specifically for use a controller. Not
sure if it's meant for robots or if they are going after the MakeyMakey market
since it is based on the Leonardo. The lack of an Xbee or similar RF socket
makes it seem more like the latter than for remote control applications. But
I'm sure it would be trivial to add your own but that doesn't really seem like
the point of this board.

That being said it can be very helpful for prototyping to already have onboard
sensors like accelerometer, temp, buttons, and pots.

I tried to buy it, but the link on the page goes to a blank page and I cannot
find it in the Arduino store when I look. I wonder what happened with that. I
would like to try one out!

EDIT: The "Buy from Arduino Store" button has now been removed from the page
and the "Buy from Distributors" button returns a 503 error. Looks like the
Esplora may be going the way of the Nexus 4

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mikenon
<http://arduino.cc/en/Main/BuyEsplora> "At the moment the Arduino Esplora is
available only at your local RadioShack shops."

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thechut
wow, just wow...

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taylorbuley
Radioshack still has a great hobbyist section. It's just hidden behind all the
warranties and cellphones.

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unwiredben
This is quite a functional piece of hardware. They've provided a package
shaped like a game system with joystick and four-way buttons, plus RGB LED,
temp sensor, loudness sensor, light sensor, analog slider, and TFT LCD
connector. I fully expect Adafruit or another maker company to come out with
kits with this, a plastic case, and screen before long.

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dirktheman
Does this mean Arduino is stepping away from the all modular, shield based
boards towards more complete, all-in-one boards? Also, I'm wondering how the
Esplora is going to be better than a standard Arduino board, with added
shields. I mean, I can see the point of an Arduino based game controller, but
why the extra sensors?

I'm not saying it's a bad thing, just curious about the decision making
progress!

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drzaiusapelord
I imagine the success of the rasperrypi and other all-in-ones is scaring the
arduino people.

Look, I'm the perfect demographic for arduino, but I never bought one. I just
don't want to have to buy tons of shields, ribbon cables, lcd displays, etc to
get a basic device that I can have some fun with. Its also a little
intimidating for beginners.

>but why the extra sensors?

Why not? We're talking a minimal amount of money added to the board. You can
always get the vanilla arduino if you want one.

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iamwil
I recently just brought both and have been playing with them, as well as
reading on the forums. There are some things that raspberry pi is better at,
such as video media or computer vision. You will never get to run Quake on
Arduino.

However, there is stuff that arduino is better at. Most people have difficult
time driving servos with the GPIO pins on the Raspberry Pi. In addition, with
the default image of Ubuntu, which is not an actual real-time OS, will cause
timing problems in the PWM (pulse width modulation) signals controlling the
servos, resulting in jittery servos when an interrupt happens. Currently, the
arduinos are better at that, plus they've been around longer, with a larger
community, and accessories. Anyway, that's where it's at now.

As for the future trajectory, I can only really guess, but from where I'm
standing as a beginner choosing between platforms, while they seem to be
targeting education, they're targeting different use cases.

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blacksmith_tb
Not to quibble with the overall point, but the "default image" is Debian-
based, but not derived from Ubuntu, I don't believe. Maybe they thought
Raspian sounded better than Rasbuntu...

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lgeek
The ARM port of Ubuntu is targeting ARMv7, but RaspberryPi has an ARM11
(ARMv6) processor, so it wouldn't run correctly.

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qdot76367
This is going to be ALL OVER art games installations (which are definitely
picking up steam the past couple of years, and hey, LA Gamespace got a quarter
million funding...). I expect we'll see digital arts galleries littered with
these within months.

Good idea too. Seems like also-but-not-quite MakeyMakey competition, because
the makeymakey was "Make buttons out of anything". This comes with the buttons
but also all of the other sensors you'd expect in controllers these days,
except you don't have to wait for someone to reverse out everything and then
write drivers for your platform.

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jasonkostempski
Anyone working with this is going to have "Dora, Dora, Dora the Esplora" stuck
in their heads to the point of insanity. And also any one who reads this. Add
a malfunctioning card swiper into the mix and there'll likely be a murderous
rampage.

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georgemcbay
Every time I read the name I think about Ice Cube, hacking away on his "two-
tone Ford Esplora"

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timdorr
This is cool, but I don't like the fact they've essentially forced you into a
particular key layout with this design. I thought the whole point of an
Arduino board is how modular it is?

What if I'm trying to build out a controller for a PS2 emulator on my phone? I
don't have all the requisite buttons. I also don't have them in the layout I'd
expect. That's kind of a bummer.

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shantanubala
I think this is for people rapidly prototyping robots and devices that need
RC-like functionality (hence the name "esplora") -- judging from that, this is
meant to be a time-saver for a very specific purpose: creating remote controls
for vehicles, which generally only require a similar button layout. I think it
will be a success, mainly because that seems to be a common task for people
using Arduino boards for robotics-type projects.

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dirktheman
I also think that's their initial idea. What I don't get is this: why would
you build an entire Arduino-based robot, only to buy an almost-ready RC-
controller. Which isn't actually an RC-controller, because you'd have to have
a separate transmitter shield for it...

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knowaveragejoe
I don't think it's intended to -just- be a controller, but rather a game
console unto itself(hence the socket for color TFT screen) . It certainly
could be used as just an input device, though.

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taylorbuley
I welcome the addition, but I see the word "fragmentation" has yet to be used
in this thread. This board is a true departure from previous designs, but it's
my experience that Arduino tutorials are getting harder and harder to "plug
and play" thanks to the many various boards out there.

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eblade
While I agree that Esplora is a true departure from previous designs, I don't
think "fragmentation" is really an obstacle here. As always, users just need
to choose the board model under Tools -> Board menu. As the underlying library
and code, I believe are still the same.

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wtracy
Can anyone comment on how hard it will be to drive the LCD over TFT with an
ATmega?

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revelation
Well, you can't actually drive a TFT with an ATmega. Speeds don't add up.

What they are talking about is connecting a TFT over SPI, which is to say a
display that has a very high-level chip on it that does the actual driving and
that you can talk to over a protocol to do various things like draw lines or
set a pixel.

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nathanpc
That looks awesome! I would love to use that in my Arduino Uno that I've
ordered for Christmas.

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anoopengineer
Any one knows of any board that supports HDMI input?

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IheartApplesDix
Asus make a whole line of various boards that support HDMI. Google mobile ITX

